Convergence
by sylveisaque
Summary: It's 1993. Ed has a miserable job. He gets a visit from a strange old man, and an even stranger job offer. A whole new world is revealed to him, with it's own share of troubles. What direction will his life take due to this encounter? -SEE PROFILE-
1. Prologue

He sighed, trudging through the Manhattan financial district, making his way to the 14th street subway station. It was August 1993, and his life was like this every day. Wake up at the ass-crack of dawn, hop the subway to Manhattan, kiss ass and work at a desk all day, then reverse the commute back to the cramped Brooklyn rowhouse (which probably hadn't been renovated since the turn of the last century) he shared with his father and brother. Edward Elric worked for the New York Stock Exchange, and was inarguably among the lowest on the totem pole. It wasn't terribly surprising, seeing how he and his family played the part of a poor, uprooted German family who had lost all in a tragic housefire (his father did an excellent 'desperate, barely-speaks-English, penniless father with two kids to support') and came to America for a new life. But that didn't stop him from complaining about the minimum wage pay, crappy commute, and little to no benefits. He had worked his fingers to the bone to find some sort of employment, because not many people wanted a hotheaded 21-year-old handling their customers. His knowledge of German had proved to be a boon to his employability, though, and he had been doing freelance translation on the side as a supplemental gig. But to make it even harder, German Marks circa 1920, however many they had, didn't last long. No money did.

His father, on a stroke of obscenely rare luck, had become owner of a small, struggling bar near the house. But once purchased, however, the reasons for the strife were found to be minimal, and Hohenheim, being a wise old man, made a few adjustments and made the bar thrive. He managed it, and Alphonse waited tables, and tended bar. But despite the steps forward they had made, the money coming from the bar narrowly outstripped expenses, just enough for necessaries for three people. Between property tax, groceries, clothing and mortgage, they had very little money to spare. And, of course, being in the biggest city in the country, there was always the chance of getting mugged. Which Edward had. Twice. At gunpoint. This little ordeal was what pushed him to purchase the small handgun he concealed in his overlarge coat. Martial artist he was, but he doubted he could dodge a bullet.

Edward made his way through the busy train junction as he was able to the street below. From there, it was a short walk to home. Fumbling for his keys, he opened the outer door.

The rowhouse they resided in was an odd one. There were two floors and a basement, each floor a separate apartment. He resided in the second floor, which also meant they had sole use of the rooftop porch, only accessible by a ladder in the broom closet.

All but dragging his feet up the stairs, he failed to notice the unfamiliar man sitting at the table conversing with Hohenheim.

"Hey," he grunted, reaching the landing and making a beeline for the bedrooms.

Alphonse, standing in the kitchenette cooking dinner, turned and admonished him "Ed, we have company, be polite. Go change and wash your hands, dinner will be ready soon."

Missing the first part, Ed gave a one-word assent, entering the room he shared with his brother. There was a small bookshelf to his left, and two beds up against the adjacent walls. He sat down on his own, sliding his right foot out of the high-arched, secondhand dress loafer with a hiss. These shoes always killed his feet when he wore them, and he walked home with a fairly noticeable limp, if he didn't walk the last leg of his commute in socks. But he had only done that once, and promised never to again after Al, ever the housewife, scolded him for it. Extracting himself from his wool brown trenchcoat and starting on the suit, the smell of potatoes and chicken drifted into the room, making his stomach voice just how much it liked the smell. He groaned, tossing the clothing to any random point and rifling through the closet for his favorite shirt. It was black and decidedly simple, with a shallow v-shaped neckline, sleeves just a bit too long (which was how he liked it anyway) and a white stripe running down the left arm, intersecting another that wrapped around the elbow. Slipping this on, and donning a pair of once-used cargo pants, he trudged into the main room, hands in pockets, with a slouch typical of the young. He stopped dead, however, when he saw the unfamiliar man at the kitchen table.

Fully awake now, he stared. "When did you come in?" he queried, slightly bewildered.

The man was certainly old, that was for sure. A long beard of silvery hair came down his front, mirrored on his back by the rest of his hair, but tied in a low ponytail. He wore glasses with half-moon-shaped rims, which rested over a crooked nose and in front of bright, piercing blue eyes. Edward wondered how someone could have so many wrinkles and not bear a resemblance to a Shar-pei.

Hohenheim turned in his seat. "This is Professor Dumbledore, Edward. He runs a boarding school in England. And he's been here the entire time." He finished the sentence with a chuckle.

The Professor stood, and extended, curiously enough, his left hand to shake Edward's. "It is a pleasure, Edward. Your father has told me much about you." His voice seemed almost hoarse, and only slightly wheezy. Edward humored the formality, echoing the sentiments halfheartedly.

"Bragged unashamedly, more like." Alphonse quipped jokingly from the stove, turning and grinning at Ed. He felt an unwarranted heat rise in his cheeks.

Dumbledore smiled kindly. "Yes, there is nothing wrong with being proud of one's children. But all small talk aside, Edward, I have an employment offer for you. Your father tells me you are unhappy with your current arrangements." There was a slight rise at the last word, indicative of a question.

Still feeling slightly uncomfortable (he was barefoot and gloveless, dammit!) he validated the statement. "Yeah, more or less. But why would you want me? I'm sure there are plenty of people in Britain who need a job."

"Ah, but that is where you are wrong, Edward." Dumbledore said, with an awfully aloof tone. "Yes, there are unemployed in England, but I would say with confidence that none are Alchemists."

At this, Ed panicked. How did he find out?

Reading Ed's stunned silence correctly, Dumbledore continued. "Do not be alarmed, I am not here to persecute you. I merely come with a proposition. You see, the subjects taught at my school, Hogwarts, are not the kind you are familiar with. It is a school of magic." Ed skeptically raised his eyebrow, obviously unbelieving. Dumbledore smiled enigmatically. "I can demonstrate, if you do not believe me."

Even more surprised now, he snorted. "Sure." The concurrence was entirely sarcastic, but Dumbledore proceeded to extract a wand from his dark red suit. No way, this guy's actually serious? And with a flick of the glorified stick- surprise surprise- nothing happened.

Edward was about to make a witty statement when something squirmed on his back. Turning his head slightly, he gawked. There was a golden snake slithering up his back, hissing at him. Panicking, he all but fell out of his chair trying to dislodge the thing and yanked on it before realizing it was attached to his head. Right where his braid had been.

"All right, all right, I believe you! Change it back, already!" he was holding the head of the thing as far away as he could, as it snapped at him.

With another flick of the wand, he found himself holding his braid with both hands, once again. Whipping it back behind his back furiously, he glared at Dumbledore, who, damn him, was grinning again, and damn if he couldn't see laughter in those eyes. Livid, he snapped at the man, ignoring his brother's stifled laughter from the stove. "So what's your point?"

"My point is, Edward, that I am in need of an Alchemy teacher. We had previously planned to implement the subject this year, and had a teacher; however, he was forced to rescind his offer quite recently due to his failing health. So I am now asking you if you will take his place." The man finished, folding his bony hands elegantly on the table, waiting for Ed's response.

Completely forgetting his anger, Ed spluttered. "Wha- A teacher? Now I know you're messing with me. Besides, if this other guy can't teach, just cancel the class."

Dumbledore sighed. "I'm afraid I cannot do that. A good portion of the older students have signed up for that class and expressed a keen interest in it. It would be very troublesome now to-"

His explanation was cut off by what looked like a streak of shiny silver vapor flying in the (closed) window and halting at the edge of the table, where it solidified into a shorthaired cat and sat down. And then, to Edward's amazement, It talked.

"The Minister of Magic has arrived at the school. He says he must speak to you, and it is quite urgent. Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban. Please return as soon as possible."

Mouth still slightly open, Dumbledore watched the cat dissolve into thin air and spoke. "Dear, dear, that is a problem. I hate to be rude, but I must return to my school. This is a very serious matter indeed."

Alphonse turned to Dumbledore, still mildly startled from before. "Um... I just finished the food, would you like to take something with you? It's a long trip back to London."

Dumbledore smiled kindly. "Thank you for the offer, Alphonse, but no. And it is not so long a trip as you think, not for a Wizard." There was a shadow of a wink. He turned back to Edward. "I had planned to explain the situation to you in detail, but since our time has been curtailed, I cannot. Instead, I will send an owl as soon as possible with all of the information and the syllabus and lesson plan our previous teacher created. Please consider my offer. For now, I must excuse myself."

"Here, I'll show you to the door. " Hohenheim stood, following Dumbledore as he took his cloak and fedora (which matched his suit) from the coat rack and descended the stairs, leaving Ed in a shocked silence.

"Al." He said, staring at the top of the stairs. "Let this be proof. I don't go searching for trouble, it finds me."

Noting the silence, Edward flopped down into the dining chair, picking golden scales out of his hair.

* * *

It had been three days since Dumbledore's impromptu visit, and the owl had already come by the second. It had a fairly small stack of papers with it, consisting of a letter penned by Dumbledore, and a lesson plan (which was undoubtedly written by an expert, he'd even included an index of materials and the strength of their atomic bonds, among other things.).

The very second he laid eyes on the average yearly wage, the deal was made. It wasn't selfishness or lust for money that led to that, rather, it was concern for his family. He had- though he didn't like to admit it- grown fond of having Hohenheim around, so he couldn't just say 'for Alphonse'. He was just barely scraping minimum wage as it was, so he was up for anything, really. He didn't like the idea of leaving home for extended periods of time, especially without his brother, but Alphonse had implored him not to let that hold him back. And it was only for what, four months, a break, and then another few until summer? Probably not even a long-term thing. He could just stand in until they found someone else, and it would be nice to actually be able to send a check home that would pay for more than just the necessary expenses.

The owl had taken up residence in their coat closet, dominating the top shelf. At first, Ed was unsure how to approach it, but after a bit of coaxing, it perched on the table, took Ed's envelope in it's beak, and sailed out the window and out of sight.

Now waiting for directions, Ed had made a grand total of two trips to the laundromat, and was now packing his things into a traveling trunk. Al assisted, folding the clothes into small squares.

"Hey."

"Mm?" Ed looked up from his crosslegged position on the floor, tossing another book aside.

"I've been wondering... you know how we destroyed the gate three years ago?"

"Yeah."

"Well... If we did that, then how are you going to transmute anything? I mean..." Al sighed, staring intently at his hands, as he often did when deep in thought. "This place is different from home. It_ feels_ different. Like there's a kind of energy missing."

"I think I know what you mean. But if that's the case, I need to know now. Guess I was so excited I didn't even think of it."

He exchanged a look with Al, tossing his hair over his shoulder. He could just manipulate the melanin in his hair, that was a simple enough array. He visualized the runes, bringing his hands together quietly, sandwiching his hair between them.

He gasped when the trademark sparks flew, hair dyeing black in their wake as a warmth flared up around him. The surprise wasn't owing to to transmutation, however. When his hands came together, he caught a glimpse of a dark, looming figure, other images flying round after it. The images gave birth to thoughts, as they often did after his encounter with the gate. His mind's eye observed alchemists transmuting in a sweltering desert aside half-built pyramids, near a pagoda, and many other ancient scenes, right up until a large gathering of people, glimpsed walking toward-

"Hey!"

His eyes snapped open, and he was back in the bedroom with Al worriedly staring at him. "You alright?"

"Um... yeah, just zoned out for a second, sorry." He chuckled sheepishly. "Looks like it works."

"So the gate is still there. Great."

"Well, maybe that's bad, maybe it isn't. It didn't really _feel_ the same, either, just now." He said, frowning. "I don't know how to explain it. But I'd be out of a job if it weren't there."

Al considered him in silence, worry flaring up in the form of a knitted brow. "Just... be careful, okay? We both know the havoc the Gate can wreak. I don't want that to happen. Not again."

"I will."

"Promise me."

"I promise, Al." Ed smiled slightly, concerned, but at the same time, not. "Don't be such a worrywart."

"I just..." Al sighed and swallowed on a lump in his throat. "I don't want us to be seperated again."

The smile faded, and Ed gave his brother an affectionate but stern look. "We won't. I swear to you, Al, nothing will come between us. Not ever." He then slung an arm around Al's shoulders companionably. "You're my baby brother. I'll always be here to protect you."

Al grinned, punching Ed lightly in the side. They returned to their previous task, now sure of their next move. And if this last week was any indication, things were certainly going to change, and soon.


	2. Chapter 1: Nothing to fear

He could remember being a big brother with a mom and a baby sibling to protect. He remembered teaming up with Pitt Renbak, his partner in crime, to put the cocky new kids and bullies in their place when they dared mess with Ed and Pitt's friends. He remembered saving Youswell, punting Yoki from his position as dictator of the small mining town. The last time he had seen the Colonel –or, rather, he was a full-fledged General now- he had been told that the two of them were heroes for taking Bradley (and Dante, but the public were better off ignorant) down. Edward had been pronounced as dead, and promoted a staggering four ranks to Major General 'posthumously' for his services to the people. _"They love you, Ed. You're a legend."_

But if he was such a great man, then how did he find himself now, a penniless nobody, losing his breakfast over the side of a Swansea-bound passenger ship?

It wasn't like he enjoyed the food anyway. Being one of the third-class customers (it was the only ticket they could afford) the food rivaled that of the East Headquarters Mess. He didn't hate the food, but he couldn't help it if the swaying of the ship made him nauseous. He could stand the jerk and pull of a small airplane, he even enjoyed it sometimes. But as he found out in London, looking for an affordable flight to America, metal detectors would definitely pose a problem when boarding a commercial flight. If he did try to get through, he would have been taken off to the side and searched, and made a spectacle of because of his limbs. And whoever knew him knew that that was the last thing he wanted. In fact, his last girlfriend, who he'd met through work, saw to it that he feel even more self- conscious about them by dumping him just because of his arm.

Dumbledore's mysterious offer was only mildly tempting for Edward at first, but after receiving the owl (which had arrived the day after the visit) with all of the information, his mind was made up. Specifically, the pay wasn't exactly fit for a king, but it was much, much better than his current wages and hours, and would help cover costs back home. Not to mention the work of planning out what to teach when had been taken care of by the previous teacher, whose name he still hadn't been given. He was curious about this enigmatic man, wondering how there could be alchemists native to this world who actually practiced. Or how one could practice at all. Maybe the magic had something to do with it. There were no bad points that he knew of, save for the possibility of getting attacked by radicals who hated muggles. Apparently his hire had stirred up a bit of trouble with the school governors, particularly a man named Malfoy.

Nevertheless, he still wasn't particularly thrilled with the idea of being thousands of miles from dry land in every direction for a whole week. Having been born and raised in a landlocked country, sea legs were not in his genes. Pun probably intended.

He whined, slumping onto the rails, feeling dizzy, nauseous and delirious. His things were all in his extremely cramped room below deck, along with the tiny mattress he'd spent most of the voyage lying on. He may as well make the trip to take a nap. If he could fall asleep at all. Lately, his sleep had been fitful, if he got any to begin with.

His feet clumped heavily on the metal stairs, one by one, until he finally reached his level. Squinting at the door numbers, he pulled the key out of his pocket, unlocking the door with a bit of difficulty and stepping inside the small room. It was really more like a large bathroom stall, barely eight feet square. There was a cheap pressboard dresser on one wall, and a cot on the other, bolted to the wall. It was a fairly small ship to begin with, so rooms were at a premium. Sitting down on the bed, he poked through his messenger bag for his watch, entirely forgetting what day it was. He knew he had been on the ship for at least four days, but had been so sick for the whole of the trip that all the days mushed together.

Finally closing his left hand around the familiar silver pocketwatch, he pulled, not expecting the small white tube that tumbled out with it and rolled toward the door. He stood, trying to remember when he had packed that, and picked the tube up, studying the label. 'Dramamine : for motion sickness'. His lip curled in a knowing smile, now sure that Alphonse had slipped them into his bag when he wasn't looking. Three years prior, when they had crossed to New York Harbor, Ed had refused to admit he was seasick. The old man and Alphonse (damn them) had no problem adjusting to the constant swaying, and commented on how green Ed had looked.

Still chuckling, he downed one of the pills dry, and opened his watch, glanced at it, and promptly did a double take. This was his last day! The ship would be docking any time now, and he would be off to the Swansea rail station. If only he had discovered those pills sooner (or Al had told him about them in the first place).This was one of the few ships that docked early in the morning of September first, at least by Britain's time, he thought, subtracting the hours in his head and winding the dial to set the new time. It was the dead middle of the last night of August back in New York, and Ed was exhausted. Gathering his messenger bag and trunk, he made his way to the deck again, since the ship was going to dock in the next ten minutes, and this would give him a head start to avoid the stampede.

Yawning deeply, he leaned against the rails, nausea ebbing away, watching the contour of the Welsh shoreline come over the barely light horizon. As they pulled in to port, other passengers filed out to the top deck, and he, too, joined the crowd to disembark.

* * *

The train ride to King's Cross was decidedly uneventful, compared to the week spent on the ship. Trains (even if they did run on fossil fuels now) were things he was much more accustomed to, and it took him no time at all to fall asleep in the squishy seats, a nice change from wooden benches. The only time he was interrupted was at the changeover in Cardiff.

Stepping out into the brisk autumn air, Edward smiled, having had a restful nap on the train. He hadn't spent much time in London, but it had a kind of mood to it that comforted him. This had been the first town he ended up in; he had lived with his Father here for a few months before moving to Munich when he was seventeen. Big Ben chimed eight-o-clock, and the Westminster chime had never sounded better to Edward in his life. It was only made better by the fact that it wasn't raining, as London skies were prone to.

"Dammit, I'm hungry." He whined, scouring the cityscape for a deli, a bistro, anything. All of the food he had eaten on the ship had ended up in the ocean, definitely less appetizing than hours previously. He had no idea whose circadian clock he was running by, but his stomach had adapted to the time change quicker than the rest of him, and it recognized breakfast as the smell of eggs and bacon floating down the street.

The urge to follow the scent was tempting, but from what the directions he had gotten from the letter Dumbledore sent him said, a couple named Molly and Arthur Weasley would be waiting for him at a shifty-sounding inn-and-restaurant called The Leaky Cauldron right about now, as his train had arrived late. It took all of the willpower he had, but he turned resolutely away from the café, following the directions outlined on the paper.

It wasn't a terribly long walk to the point specified, but it was in the seedier part of town, and he kept reaching into his coat to make sure the handgun was still there- it had luckily made it through customs. There was decades of grime and water stains on the buildings, and all of the signs were rusty. He had to squint at each one to check the name, and about the fifth one he came upon was the one he was looking for, in the shape of a cauldron. He looked over to the door, slightly nervous. _Oh well. Guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be._

When he pushed open the door, he fully expected to see a rat-infested pit, but he was pleased to find that the interior of the Leaky Cauldron was a room with hardwood floors, a cavernous ceiling, a large stone fireplace on the far wall surrounded by comfy-looking lounge furniture, and several wooden tables closer by the check-in counter. Farther toward the back was a stairwell he expected lead to the accommodations. There were a fair few patrons and guests eating breakfast, but the ones who caught his eye were two people chatting nearby the counter, one a short, slightly heavy-set woman, and the other her exact opposite: tall, lanky, and a bespectacled man. He pulled the paper out of his pocket again to confirm the description Dumbledore had written him. Steeling himself, he strode to their side of the room.

He cleared his throat hesitantly, drawing her attention. "Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to be Molly Weasley, would you?"

"Oh, you must be Edward! Professor Dumbledore mentioned you would be coming by. Yes, I'm Molly. And this is my husband, Arthur. Welcome to London, dear." The tall man smiled and extended his right hand to shake, not seeming to notice the unnatural hardness in Edward's, thank god.

"Tell me, son, have you ever flown in an airplane?" Arthur seemed to be bursting with questions, gazing intently at Edward. It was slightly unnerving.

"Um..."

"Oh, Arthur, you've only just met him! Give him a moment to breathe, for heaven's sake!"

Startled at the odd introduction, Edward glanced between the two uneasily as Arthur feigned shame and gave a compulsory 'yes, dear' to his wife, who then turned to him.

"Dear, you look a bit peaky. You've had a long trip, have you eaten any breakfast?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but wasn't quick enough to outpace his stomach, which then voiced its own confirmation with a gnawing growl. His teeth snapped together smartly as he closed his mouth and blushed a bit, smiling sheepishly.

Molly laughed, placing a hand on his back. "Come, dear, we're in the middle of breakfast ourselves, you can sit with us." She started to lead him over to a table with quite a few people at it; most of them redheads he suspected were this couple's children.

Arthur stopped their progress, pointing out a flaw. "Molly, there are too many people at that table already, why don't I take a smaller table and chat with Edward?"

Molly narrowed her eyes at him, only half serious. "I know your game, Arthur Weasley. The second I leave you two alone, you'll bombard him with questions about muggles! He's only just gotten here, he needs to have a chance to get used to things."

Knowing from the letter that he was classified as a non-wizard, AKA muggle, he spoke up. "He has a point, Mrs. Weasley. I don't think that table was built for ten." There were five red-haired, freckly-faced teenagers at the table, two of which were twins, and one of which was a girl. The oldest-looking boy was polishing some badge on his chest, and a younger boy was arguing with a bushy-haired girl, holding a rat in his hands, as far away as possible from the squashy-faced cat the girl held. In between the two was a boy with bright green eyes and messy black hair looking exasperated with the whole situation.

"Oh please, dear, call me Molly. And I do believe you're right, now you mention it..." Molly turned to look at the table, at an impasse, biting her lip. Finally, she sighed, and threatened Arthur. "Don't talk his ear off, you. I don't want him getting the wrong impression of wizards."

"I am a government employee, Molly. It's my job to obey orders." He grinned at her and winked, a silent understanding passing between the two. Edward was ushered by Arthur over to a smaller table, built for two, not too far from where the others sat.

As they sat and placed orders with a hunchbacked, snaggletoothed man who introduced himself as Tom, Arthur addressed Edward. "I'm sorry if I seemed rude before, I'm just fascinated my muggle technology. I work for the Ministry of Magic, you see, in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"Um... no, go ahead." Edward could see how some people would be fascinated by complicated machinery, but this man was an absolute fanatic. He only hoped the man didn't discover his arm, and then he was absurdly reminded of Winry before that clenching pain set in. He forced it aside.

Edward didn't know the details of the actual machinery that ran turboprops, but he was able to explain the basic physics of aerodynamics, drag and the general controls after his blood sugar leveled out again. There were a number of muggle things Arthur asked about (rubber ducks and spark plugs, to name a few), listening with rapt attention to Edward's explanations until eight forty-five came around and he (finally) let Edward ask a few questions.

"Where can I get an owl that can carry letters back to New York?"

"Oh, we can get one right in Diagon Alley. I'll show you there, if you like. We can join Molly and the kids after for the trip to King's Cross. Sound good?"

Edward agreed, not quite understanding what the man meant by 'Diagon Alley'. Being the straight-line thinker he was, it sounded like a crooked alley, and was convinced it was when he was led out the back door of the Leaky Cauldron into the small brick courtyard where a dumpster sat. He was proved wrong, however, when Arthur tapped his wand on the back wall, and it folded away before Edward's eyes, brick by brick, like a large, slow-motion transmutation.

What it revealed was not a dank, dark alley; it was a vibrant, busy cobbled street with shops lining either side as far as the eye could see. "Holy shh- crap."

Arthur laughed. "Bet you weren't expecting that, were you? " He clapped a hand on Edward's shoulder, steering him through the horde of last-minute school shoppers to, first, Gringotts bank to exchange his British currency for Wizard money, where Edward found, of all things, goblins were the tellers. They didn't seem terribly friendly, either. From there, they proceeded to an owl shop aptly named the Owl Emporium. It didn't take him long to pick one out, he ended up buying a Philippine Eagle Owl named Milagro, who would have been expensive if he weren't so old and grouchy. Apparently his species was endangered and he was smuggled over to Britain as a chick by black marketers, but confiscated by the Ministry and put up for adoption. The criminals had abused and neglected him, and they left the owl mistrustful of people and unable to survive in the wild. Edward took pity on him, proving once and for all that he was Alphonse Elric's brother.

They found Molly and the kids in a bookstore called Flourish and Blotts, purchasing schoolbooks. Edward, needing nothing more than a few inexpensive quills, ink bottles and parchment, hung back near the door with his purchases, popping an occasional treat to Milagro, who didn't seem to like him much, but Ed was determined to win him over. Milagro was the only owl he could afford, and certainly fit the 'old and irritable' description (the scratch on his knuckle was proof of that; luckily he thought to pack extra gloves). He yawned lightly, feeling the energy from his powernap draining with every passing minute.

He was a bit surprised when the redhead who had been polishing his badge at breakfast (which, now he looked at it, read 'head boy') approached him and asked "Are you the new Alchemy teacher?"

Rising from his position on the floor next to Milagro, Ed responded with a "Yeah."

The teenager immediately smiled, sincere but not without a haughty undertone. "I've signed up for your class this year. My name's Percy Weasley, it's a pleasure to meet you, Professor..." he paused, waiting for Edward to fill in his name.

Edward barely suppressed a snort of laughter. "Professor? You don't have to call me that, it makes me want to go looking for my dad. Just call me Edward." This Percy kid was awfully congenial and proper for a teenager.

Percy's smile faltered for a moment. "Just... Edward? That seems a bit unprofessional."

A bit miffed now, Edward responded, a bit less kindly and more clipped than before, with "Being called things like 'Mr. Elric' or 'sir' makes me uncomfortable, but you can if you want, kid."

Percy's eyebrows shot up, realizing his mistake. "Oh- no, I didn't mean to insult you, I just meant-"

He was cut off by the two identical twins descending upon him, pushing down on his shoulders, barely managing to stay upright.

"Already pissing off the new teacher, Perce?"

"Usually it takes you a day or so after school starts to piss people off, I think this is a personal record."

They continued along this line, much to Edward's surprise and growing amusement, until Percy finally had enough and stormed off, face red with anger and embarrassment.

Grinning madly, they turned back to him. "You looked like you needed some rescuing, mate."

"Percy can bore a man to tears any day of the week, but he's been a first-class prat ever since he got that 'head boy' badge."

"Ah. It all makes sense now."

Edward had read in Dumbledore's letter of the basic infrastructure of the school, including ages and status of prefects, and the head boy and girl, as well as heads of house and their respective duties.

"We're Fred and George, by the way."

"And don't expect to see us in your class; we're not exactly the booksmart types."

Still smiling, Ed quipped "Yeah, you two seem more like holy terrors than those who study for your grades." _Just like me and Pitt when we were kids._

"Yup! Wouldn't have it any other way."

* * *

By the time they finished in the bookstore, it was quarter till ten, and it was no small feat getting all eight of the travelers ready for their departure in time, as Kings Cross was a good twenty minute walk away. Carrying his trunk in one hand, messenger bag draped over one shoulder, and holding onto Milagro's cage with the other hand, he was so deep in conversation with Arthur that he didn't even notice when the scenery changed abruptly from the King's Cross he knew to what looked like a rural platform with a scarlet steam engine waiting for passengers to board. 'Hogwarts Express' was emblazoned across the side in large black letters, rimmed with gold.

"Um... Arthur?" He said, looking behind him at the people filing through a solid wall.

"Yes?"

"Did we just walk through a wall?"

"Yes, Edward, we did."

"Oh. Okay. I just thought I was going mad there, for a moment."

Arthur laughed as they walked over to the train. Edward thanked Molly and Arthur for their trouble, and, to his surprise, Molly hugged him and told him to take care of himself. He hadn't met someone that...well... maternal since his own mother had died, save for Izumi, and she was only capable of short bursts of motherly affection. Often after she beat the snot out of him. Now that he thought about it, Arthur had called him 'son' more than once, and treated Ed like one of his own. He wondered if they had that effect on everyone.

His eyes burned all of a sudden, unbidden heat rising to his face. He had lived in this world for five years so far, and he should have put all thoughts of ever returning home again out of his mind, but dammit, he missed them... missed Winry, Pinako, Izumi, the Hughes family, he even missed the soldiers he had gotten to know in his short military term, however much they pissed him off back then. His hands shook as he tried to place his trunk on the overhead rack in the empty train compartment, just before the strap to his shoulder bag snapped and all of his belongings came tumbling out.

Tears stuck to his eyelashes as he swore colorfully, not all of his frustration bubbling up because of the faulty strap. He wiped furiously at his eyes, throwing his things back into the broken bag with unwarranted viciousness. It was then that another man passed by the compartment, stopping kindly to help Edward gather his things.

"Thanks." Edward muttered, still recovering from his miniature emotional breakdown.

"Oh, don't mention i- agh!"

The man recoiled in pain as Edward's head snapped up, the pocketwatch the man had reached for falling to the carpeted floor with a dull thud. The man was holding the injured hand with his other, and the smell of burning flesh permeated the air. Confused, Edward looked from the watch to the man, and at that moment, everything clicked.

In the storybooks he had read as a child, a silver bullet was one of the only things that could kill or injure a werewolf. And his State Alchemist's pocketwatch, emblazoned with the old regime's symbol, was made of purely that.

Shocked, his voice came out as a small whisper. "You... you're a werewolf, aren't you?"

The man's eyes registered the word, filling with one part hurt, four parts shame. He averted them skittishly. "Um...I'm sorry, I'll leave if you want me to, I understand if you-"

"I don't. I wasn't mad or anything, just curious. You can stay if you want." He smiled in what he hoped was a companionable fashion.

The brown-haired man's face relaxed a bit, as he nodded slowly. "Right, I understand. It's just that, in the wizarding world, werewolves aren't looked too kindly upon. The Ministry makes it a priority to spread word of all werewolves' identities, so naturally everyone's scared of us. So... could you please keep this between us?" He smiled apologetically, the gesture highlighting the scars crisscrossing his face.

Edward smiled in return. "Sure. I've got some secrets of my own, you see." He glanced at the glass door, making sure there was no one there as he pulled back his right sleeve a bit, the light glinting off the metal. Surprise made its way on to the other man's face, but not without a hint of wariness. "Don't worry, it's not silver. If it was, it'd have probably been stolen by now. It's made of a titanium alloy, a light but strong metal. My leg's fake, too."

The man chuckled a little. "Well. I can't say I was expecting that. I couldn't even tell they were prosthetics. My name is Remus Lupin, by the way. I'm the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. I've heard about you in the news. First muggle ever to teach at the school."

"Oh, great." Ed sighed. "News coverage. That's exactly what I need right now."

"It would have been worse if there hadn't been a jail break in the same week. You got lucky, so to speak."

The train lurched heavily as the engine jerked into motion, straining to pull the heavy cars behind it. As the train gained momentum, the opposite side of the platform slowly moved past the window and out of sight, as parents hurried last-minute goodbyes to their children on the other. It was then that Ed settled into the seat and dozed off, lullabied by the clacking of the rails, and the steam engine's whistle.

* * *

He was having a fairly pleasant, if bizarre dream that involved fighting off vampire cats with his brother when he felt claws sinking into his legs, just above the knees.

"Sonova- OW!" He lashed out at the perpetrator, a fat orange cat, and slammed his metal knee into the table attached to the windowsill.

"Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry! Bad Crookshanks, you don't do that!"

He looked up, groggy, grumpy and in pain, to see the brown-haired girl from breakfast rushing into the coompartment ant grabbing the writhing, hissing cat that had injured him. Remus, amazingly, was huddled in his coat across the compartment from Edward, dead asleep.

A boy hurried in after her, hiding a small cage behind him. "See, I told you that thing was vicious! He goes after people for no reason!"

"Oh, shut up Ronald!" The girl turned to Ed. "I'm so sorry, I don't know what got into him. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, fine." Edward looked at her two companions, the same two from breakfast, except the black-haired boy was holding an owl cage with a beautiful Snowy perched inside of it, clicking her beak disdainfully, irritated that she had been woken. The boy recognized him and spoke.

"Were you that guy Mr. Weasley was talking with at breakfast?"

"Yeah. I'm a teacher."

"Ooh, really? Are you the new Defense teacher?" She seemed excited, almost giddily so.

"What? No, that's him." Edward jerked his head toward Remus. There was an awkward silence, the children eyeing him warily. "Well? You gonna sit down, or what?"

After helping the kids place their trunks on the racks, they had introduced themselves as Hermione Granger, (the girl with the evil cat) Ron Weasley,( the redhead) and Harry Potter ( the green-eyed boy). It wasn't much longer before he drifted off again.

* * *

The next time he was woken from his dreams, he wasn't nearly as grouchy about it. This time, for some reason, he was reliving the time Barry the Chopper had attacked him, except this time, he had the gaunt, filthy, crazed face of Sirius Black that he remembered from a wanted poster he'd glanced at in the Leaky Cauldron. He had been a bit worried once he heard this man killed twelve muggles mercilessly. A serial killer with a penchant for going after muggles... Ed could handle the average street thug, but a serial killer with magic on his side? He wasn't so sure. Nevertheless, the only thing he had a problem with was the method of the waking.

As the train screeched to a stop, and jerked violently back and forth as the momentum drained, he pitched forward, and slammed his head into that damned table again.

"Damn it!" He hissed, minding the presence of those around him pressed his flesh hand onto the spot where the table corner collided with him, and it came back with blood on it. Wonderful. It had reopened that stupid scar the Slicer Brothers had given growled under his breath, lifting his head, and just then, the lights went out.

Absurdly, laughter very nearly bubbled up his throat but was squelched unquestionably as the air grew ice-cold. The anger and frustrated amusement drained out of him like water from a sieve, and was replaced with dread and fear.

He looked to the door, seeing thick, torrential rain beyond the corridor windows. Just then, black, wispy robes drifted into view, a skeletal, slimy hand extruding from them to reach for the door handle. His breath caught in his throat, frozen in fear, as a hooded creature entered, silhouetted by thin, obscured rays of sunlight from the sky behind it.

Images flashed through his mind as it approached him, a bloody splatter on an alley wall, pulsating pile of organs in the middle of a smudged chalk circle, blood spurting from where his limbs were supposed to be, dead, warped body under a sheet, Greed, dead, crushed under flaming wreckage, stabbing, fatal pain in his chest, screaming, pain, so much pain-

"Edward! EDWARD!"

The show going on in his mind silenced abruptly. His vision swam as the train compartment came back into view, panting so rapidly he nearly passed out. He noticed, dimly, that the lights were back on, the train was moving, that- that thing was gone, and Harry was lying on the floor, Hermione and Ron huddled around him.

Eyes wide, he set a hand over his heart, forcing himself to calm down. He clenched his eyes shut, stifling a whimper, as he suddenly tasted bile in the back of his mouth.

He stood quickly, muttering something about 'be back in a minute', staggering out of the compartment and just barely reaching the toilet before the bile forced its way up his throat. He was violently sick for a good few minutes before he could calm his stomach enough to take deep, bracing breaths, his pulse slowly returning to normal.

He removed his right glove and set the hand on his forehead, the cold biting into his skin, helping his temperature come down. He panted, eyes wet, face sweaty, and stomach empty, wondering why he had gone into some kind of fit when that thing came into the compartment. He retched suddenly, cutting off his train of thought, more bile and saliva coming up his throat.

He coughed, wiping his mouth, and stood shakily, and leaned against the wall outside the water closet, slowly coming down off the adrenaline high.

He stood there for a few minutes, just breathing, before Remus approached him, looking concerned.

"Are you all right?" He said worriedly, taking in Edward's appearance. "You looked about ready to pass out."

Edward swallowed, closed his eyes, and nodded, slowly. "Yea-yeah, I'll be okay." His voice sounded tiny, even to him. "How's the kid?"

"He just passed out, but he came around a bit ago. I'm off to see the conductor. Oh!" He exclaimed, turning back to Ed. "You should eat this, it helps with dementor attacks." He proffered some chocolate to Edward.

"Dementor? Is that what that was? That black thing?"

"Yes. They're foul, horrible creatures whose only purpose is guarding Azkaban. They make you relive your worst memorie-" He halted in his explanation suddenly, confusion making it's way into his expression. "Wait, you could see it?"

"Yeah..." Edward spoke slowly, not comprehending why his ability to see dementors was so bizarre.

Remus furrowed his brow, deep in thought. "Have you ever demonstrated an aptitude for magic before?"

"No, I just told you, I didn't even know magic existed until a few weeks ago."

Remus sighed. "Well... perhaps I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that muggles couldn't see dementors."

At a loss, Edward spoke. "So what does that make me?"

Remus bit his lip and thought for a moment. "I'm not sure." He sighed. "Well, I've got to talk to the conductor before we arrive." He gestured for Edward to take the chocolate again.

Edward refused the chocolate, using the previous stomach purging as an excuse. It was the truth, he felt like at this point, he couldn't even hold water down.

The walk back to the compartment was slow and steady. As he neared the door, he heard Ron's voice drifting toward him from inside.

"- feel bad, mate, Ed looked about as bad off as you. He was pale as a sheet."

He sighed. _Great, kid, tell the whole damn train_. He stepped just a little bit heavier as he came to the door, giving Ron time to shut up before sitting down in his seat again.

He couldn't sleep for the rest of the trip.


	3. Chapter 2: Beginnings and Ends

I've got some bad news.

After I upload this chapter and the next, and possibly 4, there might not be any updates for a while.

There's something going on in my family. Someone very close to me is not likely to live more than six months. I'm going to be focusing on my family more than anything in the coming months, and almost everything else will have to take a backseat, namely writing.

Sorry. Just a heads up incase I go missing. :)

* * *

The rest of the train ride passed in uncomfortable silence, the only time benchmark being Remus' return from his chat with the conductor a mere quarter hour before they arrived. The rain was still heavy and thick when the train pulled in to Hogsmeade (and of course the platform had no roof), so Ed draped his coat over Milagro's cage, more out of necessity than kindness, as a drowned owl was a useless owl. And a drowned owl couldn't carry letters to Glasgow, much less over the Atlantic ocean.

Even from the small, shallow valley that Hogsmeade was situated in, Edward could still catch sight of three stone castle towers through the dense coniferous forest and low-lying clouds. It was a bit awe-inspiring, he had to admit. And if the castle was as old as Dumbledore's slanted writing said, then magic was probably all that was holding it together.

No more than ten feet from the train, Edward was already soaked to the bone, blonde hair plastered to his face. Thankfully, Remus said, the carriages that ferried students to the school were affixed with covers in the event of a rain. As he had no idea where he was going, Edward simply kept close behind Remus, following him as far as the carriages, when he stopped dead at the sight of the horses that pulled said transports.

Normally, being from the most secluded of all podunk villages in Amestris, this would have been a commonplace sight for him, if it weren't for the black, leathery skin that stretched over the beast's skeletal form, and awkward, bony wings jutting out from the general vicinity of the withers. What was even stranger was that they were... familiar, somehow.

He stood and gawked until Remus leaned close and muttered in his ear, "Thestrals. Completely harmless, they're actually rather sweet. Don't worry about them."

Lowering his eyebrows in a skeptical manner, Edward looked sidelong at his companion. "If you say so." His voice was laced with a wary kind of doubt. Nevertheless, he heaved his luggage into the carriage, setting his owl cage on the floor next to him. "So is there anything else I should know? Like, are there poltergeists haunting the castle, or something? I mean, the headmaster covered all of the important bases in the letters, but still..."

Remus smirked as the coach began rolling. "Funny you should mention that. There are a number of ghosts in the castle, and most are benevolent, one is even a teacher, but the only real 'poltergeist' is Peeves. You'll want to steer clear of him. His favorite pastime is to drop things on the heads of passers-by, from water balloons to bricks." He laughed again at the look on Edward's face. "He mostly has people he singles out and tortures, so as long as you don't do anything to draw his attention, you'll be fine. The only other odd things are that the paintings can talk and move within their frames, and the suits of armor occasionally sing, if they're charmed to." Ed barely suppressed a laugh at the last anecdote. The accompanying bizarre mental image need not be described.

There were a number of other warnings Remus had to offer, including the 'trick steps' that trapped your leg, and to, as a general rule, avoid the woods on the outskirts of the grounds, because of the beasts that lurked within (giant, man-eating spiders and Centaurs to name a couple). Oh, and the lake had a giant squid and Merpeople in it. Just food for thought.

By the time they reached the castle, Edward was seriously questioning his sanity. What the hell was he thinking, he was totally out of his element! Granted, his 'element' was on the other side of the gate, but still. Magic? Who in their right mind would dive in to this with nothing but a little pea-shooter to defend themselves? He was good with hand-to-hand, but be doubted he could outpace a well-aimed spell.

He sighed, having darted into the entrance hall, and set to wringing out his hair. _Oh well. I'm already in neck-deep. Can't hurt to give it a chance._ As soon as his hair was passably dry, he stooped to pick up his things, fully planning to head to his quarters as soon as possible. His stomach was still roiling uncomfortably, giving him a distinct feeling of acidic nausea. What he really wanted was a nice, long sleep after his trek across half the globe, but he had to leave his things where they were after being told that dinner came next. He relented, hoping that some of this nausea owed to hunger, though slightly cautious about leaving his things alone in a busy hall. He followed Remus, who told him they would be delivered to his quarters, through a network of hallways that led to the staff entrance to the great hall, where dinner would be served. There was a bit of a discrepancy, though. "Hey, Remus."

"Yes?"

"This is your first year teaching, right?"

"Yes, it is."

"Well... you seem a bit more comfortable with the building than any first-year teacher I know. And I saw a sign back there that said 'staff only'. Have you been through here before?"

Strangely enough, a slight sheepish grin curled his lips. "That is a different story for a different time, Edward."

Ed balked. "What? Mr. goody-two-shoes misbehaved in school? For shame, Remus!"

"I'll have you know that it wasn't me that did the misbehaving, my friends were the troublemakers. I just got dragged into things, that's all. And I was only made prefect because Dumbledore thought I'd be able to rein them in. Needless to say,_ that_ plan failed miserably."

Whatever Remus asserted, Ed kept up the good-natured jabs until they reached the door that opened onto the raised platform at the end of the Great Hall. Meeting them outside said door was a table positioned on the raised platform with other men and women who, besides looking quite ancient, were overseeing the steady filing of students into the hall from the heavy oaken doors at the far (far) end. One of the older men turned at their entrance, and it took Edward a moment to recognize Dumbledore, ad he was out of the red suit and now in what any muggle would expect a wizard to wear- robes. Remus smiled in return, striding over to greet him. Feeling like a stray puppy, Edward couldn't help but follow.

"Remus. It's a pleasure to see you again. I trust you are doing well?"

"Yes, thanks, Professor. I've certainly been better since receiving this offer, suffice it to say. It's good to be back here again."

Edward happened to glance at the older man and caught his eye for a moment, nodding a greeting. He was more tired now than he ever remembered feeling in his life, so naturally his attention span was shrunken. Separate from his (already) meandering psyche, Remus and Dumbledore had continued their chat as his own eyes had flicked to the ceiling, and for a fleeting moment, he felt like an immigrant again, staring up at the gothic- inspired steeples of 's Cathedral in Manhattan like any of the myriad tourists. What he found in this ceiling, rather than rafters, was a reflection of the outside sky, mottled gray clouds (thankfully not dropping water on their heads) and simple white candles, suspended in midair. He was so enamored with this sight that it took him a moment to realize that Remus was calling his name. His mind jerked back to attention, head doing a similar sort of roundabout, responding with a none-too-eloquent "What?".

Remus gestured toward the headmaster with a slightly amused grin at Edward's wandering mind. Ed then looked to Dumbledore, who spoke before he himself could.

"Remus tells me you were attacked by the dementor that entered the train. You may go see Madam Pomphrey if you like, she can help with the clamminess."

Silently perturbed that his own mental state was the first thing out of Remus' mouth, Ed tried to respond without too much indignancy coloring his voice. "I'm fine, thanks. I'm tired more than anything at the moment." To be perfectly honest, the tremors had reduced to a fine shivering that he hadn't even noticed until it was mentioned. And that was probably more the lingering cold's fault than the dementor's.

Dumbledore briefly looked as if he didn't believe Edward's assertion, but the moment passed almost imperceptibly before the calm demeanor was back. "I see. Very well. Perhaps, then, you and Remus will take your seats? "

Edward nodded, and followed Remus to their seats, right of the center seat, which he supposed was reserved for Dumbledore. Edward ended up sitting one position down from the end, next to an older woman, gracefully aged, with defined streaks of slate grey and silver in her black hair. She had fairly sharp features, but not without a hint of the patience required to teach rowdy teenagers. Still thinking he'd rather be in his bed, Ed laced his fingers together, propped his elbows on the table, and set his chin upon his hands tiredly, surveying the cavernous room.

There were four long tables on the main floor of the hall, which almost ran the entire length of the room, end to end. He supposed there was one table per house, the way it was set up. The children (students, not children, he was barely the oldest student's elder by four years)had almost completely filled the tables now, only a few empty patches on the benches were discernable.

He thought the tallest man he would ever know was Major Armstrong, but he was proved wrong on the heels of his next breath. An enormous man, seven feet at the very least, walked into the hall next, tailed by a group of forty or so petrified tweens in nondescript black robes. He hadn't realized he'd muttered a soft curse until the woman on his right snickered. He whipped his head to the side to find her favoring him with a very Mustang-esque smirk. Only, on this woman's face, it didn't piss him off in the least.

"That is Hagrid, the gamekeeper. He escorts the first year students across the Black Lake upon their arrival. Quite frankly, I am surprised you didn't notice him at the station. He tends to stand out." Her voice was a bit deeper and throaty than he would have expected, but still smooth and a bit feminine nonetheless.

Edward quirked an eyebrow, bemused. "Really? And who might you be, O wise one?" He thought this would have sounded offensive to anyone else, but he had a feeling that this woman had a sense of humor.

His hunch was confirmed. "Aurora Sinistra, you snotty little smartass." It would have been condescending if it weren't for the amused smile on her face, and the laugh in her voice.

"Have a thing for alliteration?"

"The same way you have an attitude that befits a small yappy dog compensating for it's size."

Ed couldn't help it. His mouth worked soundlessly, like a dying fish gasping for air, as an indignant blush covered his ears. A barely stifled laugh came from the man to his left. "I think you got him there, Aurora."

Aurora poked her head around Edward to better see the man. "Oh! Hello, Remus. Good to see you again. And who is this snarky young man here?" She whapped his chest lightly with the back of her hand.

"Edward Elric, he's replacing our enigmatic Alchemy-teacher-who-wasn't."

"Ah." She turned back to Ed, who was still gawking slightly. She placed a hand on the underside of his jaw, and pushed up, snapping his teeth together with an audible clack. "Well then. Welcome to hell." She laughed quietly in a parody of insanity, amused at Edward's dubious look.

What came next was the 'sorting', in other words, shuffling the first-years into the appropriate house, which involved a dilapidated stool and an equally dilapidated pointed hat typical of the witch stereotype- except for the fact that it spoke. Then, Dumbledore delivered a speech to the student body, first warning that the dementors would be guarding the castle on account of Sirius Black still being out of custody, then introducing three new appointments- Remus as Defense teacher, the behemoth as Care of Magical Creatures Professor, and, of course, Edward as Alchemy teacher. He felt his face redden a little when his name was spoken to the room, training his eyes decidedly away from the prying ones of the myriad teenagers in front of him. And he kept his skinny little arse firmly in his seat, thankyouvverymuch.

He barely suppressed a surprised squawk when food appeared on the table out of thin air. Thankfully (or perhaps not) the only to hear were Remus and Aurora, who both laughed at him. Dammit.

He didn't eat too much at dinner, as his stomach had calmed down considerably, but still wasn't quite up to snuff. Remus postponed the schoolwide tour until such time that they both had a free period, for Ed's health if nothing else. Ed felt considerably better since dinner, but his eyelids were threateningly heavy, and he feared he might pass out if he didn't get some kind of rest soon.

"And this is your classroom. I think." Remus opened the door for Edward once they reached it, following him in soundlessly.

Coming slightly awake again, Ed let out a low whistle. His room was on the second floor, and afforded an excellent view of the lake and the mountains beyond it out the towering, cathedral-esque windows to his left. It seemed they could be opened, too. He assumed it was one of the smaller classrooms, using only the sheer number of students as a benchmark. The room looked as though it would fit fifteen or twenty students comfortably, at the most. Pushed up against the walls were student desks, and another, larger one he assumed was the teacher's desk. There was a small stairwell at the far end which came up to a door.

He pointed to said door. "And where does that go?"

"To your room. It's an odd setup, but some of the classrooms here were built with the teacher's quarters attached, and I think this was the only classroom available." Remus stretched lazily, working his shoulders a bit. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'd better find my own quarters before I get a faceful of rock."

Waving Remus off, he strode toward the stairs, uneven steps echoing hollowly in the silence. The door opened without any real trouble, and he was surprised, again, at the room beyond it. Standing even with the door was what looked like his office, and beyond was a split level platform. Down the steps would lead to a lounge area (with his luggage arranged neatly in the middle of the floor), and up would lead to a smaller section lined with bookcases. There were windows that stretched from the lower floor all the way to the high ceiling. Off through a door in the small lounge below was his bedroom and bathroom. The rooms were probably small for what they were, but he wasn't one to covet wide open spaces in a dwelling. He much preferred the kind that was just small enough to be cozy, but not enough to be cramped.

Too exhausted to have a good look around, he trotted down into the lounge and opened the door to his quarters, barely getting his shoes off before he flopped onto the bed. Writing to Alphonse could wait until morning. For now, he needed sleep.

* * *

"Ed."

"..."

"Edward."

"..."

"ED!"

"...Mnf."

He heard his younger brother sigh, and suddenly felt biting cold on his body as the blankets were yanked away. It had been only a few days since they destroyed the gate to their homeworld, assisted by their father. Al had noticed the odd expression on Edward's face after they 'landed' and Ed mentioned that things were much more dark and... well... dead than when he and Hohenheim first came through. It was Hausehoffer's villa, he was sure of it, but everything was dusty and dilapidated, like no one had lived there for decades.

Upon working their way out of the ruins of the villa and into Munich, the first thing Edward did was give Al some money for a newspaper while he and Hohenheim tried to make sense of just what part of the city this was. Ed first suspected something strange when Al came back with much more change than he expected. What with all the recent inflation, newspapers were not only obscenely expensive, but made out of the cheapest paper he'd ever seen in his life. He nearly choked on his own spit when he read the date on the paper: November 9th, 1990. And last he checked, 67 years didn't pass overnight.

The next few days were a minefield of culture shock. Things like television, computers, and cellular telephones may as well have been alien technology to Ed, for all he knew of them. Television had only been in it's infancy in 1923, silent, grey and fuzzy, but now, they had color screens, the quality was amazing, and they had sound.

It took a week or so at a cheap hotel, but Edward and Hohenheim decided America would be the best place to start over. The Weimar Republic (or Germany, rather) already had documentation of an Edward Elric and Phillipus von Hohenheim from decades ago, so not only could the relocation allow them to keep their names, but would also avoid raising suspicion if they made a slip in front of the wrong person. Edward only had one stop to make before they left. He and Alphonse made a small detour as Hohenheim found them transportaton.

"A grave?"

""Yeah. Heidrich's mother." He turned back to the florist and paid for the bouquet of white lilies. "Danke schon."

"She was a kind woman." Luckily, no one would look at him funny if he spoke Ame- English now, as the general 'image' in Germany was much better. It was a recent change, apparently, since some sort of wall had been knocked down one year previous. "Alfons would visit her every week, took me along a few times. She was a sweet old woman. And I do mean old. I thought she was his grandmother at first." He chuckled. "It tore him up when she died, but apparently she never was the healthiest woman on earth. So instead of visiting her house every week, after that he would bring flowers to her grave."

The gravesite wasn't hard to find, though Ed nearly walked straight past the cemetery talking to Al. It was situated right under an ancient cedar tree whose trunk was crooked enough at one point that one could sit on it comfortably. The tombstone read:

Adelheide Wilhelmina Heidrich

30 Marsch 1864 7 Oktober 1922.

He set the flowers gently against the headstone, stood straight and sighed. He didn't believe in praying for the dead, but he stayed for a few moments out of respect. As he turned to leave, his eyes flicked briefly to the headstone next to it, and his heart stopped dead.

Alfons Josef Heidrich

29 Juni 1906 November 1923

He walked blindly over to the cold granite and fell to his knees. _He died the day I left_. His breath left him in a harsh puff of cold autumn air as his unfeeling hand traced the letters. _It's my fault. I know it is._

He didn't even realize he was crying until Alphonse wrapped his arms around him, cradling Ed's head on his shoulder. He squeezed his eyes shut, shoulders jerking with each withheld sob. But Al's shoulder was warm and soft and flesh and fuck he was _not_ going to cry!

Al stroked his hair soothingly, and his composure broke.

* * *

He started awake with a gasp, body tensed. This wasn't his room.

He jumped out of the bed, eyes searching the room frantically before his brain scraped itself into a neat little pile, and he belatedly realized where he was. Hogwarts. Scotland. Alphonse was in safe New York city with dad... over three thousand miles away. Turning back to the bed, he noticed his pillow was wet. Had he been drooling again? He raised a hand to his face, surprised to find it tearstained. He slouched, flopping onto a nearby chair, put his hands over his face and sighed shakily. He'd been dreaming about Alfons again.

He'd had a feeling Alfons wasn't well for a while before... then. The boy had been coughing almost constantly since they met, and kept writing it off as a cold. What really drove it home was the night Alfons stormed out of the apartment, and they had a shouting match on the stairwell. He'd gotten himself so worked up that he fell into a violent coughing fit and spat up blood. Edward's stomach had gone cold at that moment, as images of Izumi flashed through his mind. There were a fair few times during his first stay with her that she was laid up in bed, pale and feverish. Back then, mere months after his mother's death, he was worried sick about her, scared he would lose this mom too. Not that she could ever replace Trisha.

He raised his head, inhaled bracingly through his nose, and sighed again. Well. _That_ thought got away from him. And it wasn't good to keep agonizing over such dark things, that much he knew. Luckily, his first class wasn't until Wednesday, and today was Monday. He couldn't keep dwelling on the past and those he'd lost and expect to move forward. It wasn't logical, and it wasn't healthy.

He walked back out to the common area to get his watch and luggage, which he'd neglected last night. _I should write Al... tell him I haven't burned the place down...yet._ Apparently Milagro was at the Owlery, a detached tower which housed all of the domestic owls on grounds, and all that remained in his possession to prove Milagro was his was the cage he'd carried the bird in. Judging by the position of the sun over the lake, it was about an hour before noon, which meant breakfast was probably over. Shivering despite the fact he was wearing pants and a zip-front jacket, he turned to the fireplace, meaning to light it, but discovered that someone- or something- already was. They made eye contact and stared for a moment before registering.

Ed screamed, jumping away from the fireplace and fumbling in his coat for his gun. The thing couldn't have been more than two feet tall, with grayish skin, buggy eyes, and ears half the size of it's head. The thing screamed as well, cowering at the hearth. "Dobby's sorry sir, he didn't know sir was awake!"

"What the hell? What're you doing in here?"

"Dobby was lighting the fire, sir! Dobby's sorry!"

"Lighting the- why?" He was still on guard, albeit not as tense as before.

The creature looked up, watery green eyes staring at him. "Well, that's Dobby's job, isn't it, sir? House elves at Hogwarts tend the fires and clean for a living. Well, Dobby does, at least."

House elf? Remus did mention those. Leave it to me to not pay attention. He sighed, sagging against a nearby pillar. "Damn it. Just don't sneak up on me like that, okay?"

"Yes sir, Dobby won't. Would sir like Dobby to bring him breakfast?"

"Um. No, thanks. I'm... just gonna go shower now." Ed backed toward his bedroom door, not taking his eyes of the elf. 'Dobby' nodded, and literally disappeared before his eyes.

Wandering wobbly-legged to his shower, Ed stood facing the wall and bonked his head against it and left it there. _If every damned thing is going to sneak up on me, scare the shit out of me, or BOTH, I don't think I wanna do this anymore._ He sighed as he turned the tap, and water began to fall from the showerhead. Today was going to be a _long_ first day.

* * *

After showering, writing his brother, and a brief (or, as brief as one could make it considering Hogwarts' sheer size) tour of the castle, Ed found himself hungry enough to wander into the Great Hall to catch some lunch. He'd never been the type to eat breakfast (he suspected this owed to his years on the road with Al) so by lunch he was just a little bit dizzy.

The food was, in a word, amazing. Or, it would be amazing to a man who'd only eaten second-rate crap with freezer-burn for a week only to throw it up later. He scarfed down three tuna sandwiches and probably a quart of water before he felt satisfied. He would have tried the pumpkin juice but his stomach lacked the resolve at the moment.

After lunch, he sat at the table for a while, thinking. He really had nothing better to do than wander the grounds... or visit the library, maybe. Yeah, the library sounded like a good idea.

Standing up, he turned to exit the hall... and ended up with a faceful of bushy hair. He backpedaled, only to see a massive beard in front of him... and looked up, into the face of the behemoth. Ho-lee SHIT he was bigger up close.

"Uh... s-sorry. Didn't see you." He smiled in a mix of wariness and apology, crab-walking to the side to get around him.

"Hey, arn't yeh tha' new teacher? Ed somethin-or-other?"

"Ed- Edward Elric." Dammit, what was it with the stuttering all of a sudden? He wasn't actually _scared_ of the guy, was he? "And... you're Hagrid, right?"

"Tha's me. Got me first class today. Wha' about you?"

"No, my first class is Wednesday..." He trailed off, noticing the animal in his hand for the first time. He arched a brow."...What's with the dead polecat?"

"Oh, that. Tha's for the Hippogriffs."

"The what?"

"Hippogriffs. Yeh mighta' heard 'em called Gryphons. Mistakenly, a' course, but people tend ter confuse 'em."

Edward thought for a moment. The word was vaguely familiar... "Oh! Yeah, I know what those are. Horses with an eagle's head and wings, right?"

"Tha's them. Yeh can come see 'em if yeh like, I got a class at twelve thirty."

"Um...okay. Sure." _I've got nothing else to do._

"Great, I'll lead yeh ter the paddocks if yeh'll wait jus' a sec."

Edward leaned against the doorjamb as Hagrid walked down the hall and chatted with a small group of students. He didn't take very long, and before long they were headed out to the paddocks with Hagrid talking enthusiastically about Hippogriffs. It was obvious from how he spoke that he loved animals. With a capital L.

He caught himself after a while, though. "Sorry abou' tha'. Didn't mean teh talk yer ear off."

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with being proud of what you do." He grinned suddenly, remembering Winry. "I had a friend when I was younger who was absolutely nuts about machinery. Never shut up about it, in fact. Every time I visited, I'd tease her about it. Then she'd turn around and call me an alchemy freak. But to be fair, I guess I was. Is. Am." Pondering the proper grammar for a moment, he decided it wasn't important.

Hagrid laughed slightly and went into thought for a moment before realizing something. What, Ed wasn't quite sure. "Oh- oh, blimey, you got a watch?"

"Yeah, hang on..." Ed reached in his pocket, withdrawing his pocketwatch. The engraving (or vandalism, some might say) was inside the back cover, so it was okay just to check the time. "Quarter past noon."

"Oh, good, I though' it was later. We still got a bit before the kids'll gather. And these are the Hippogriffs!"

Edward stopped at the edge of the paddock, inside a sparse patch of the forest. Or it could be called a paddock, as the walls looked more like terraces than fences. Inside it stood five Hippogriffs, each one with a different kind of coat. "You've got five?"

"Yup." Hagrid turned around, spying a thin trail of students coming down the slope. " Say, yeh wouldn't mind standin' in, would yeh? Yeh know, warn me if I'm doin' somethin' wrong?" Edward turned as well, catching sight of them treading carefully down the steep slope.

"Er... that's the thing, I haven't taught before either. But you did say that these things are proud, haughty, and dangerous when offended, right?"

"Yup."

"Well. I think teenagers can be described with the same words, so you should probably start out with one and go from there, just to be safe. I'll just be over here if you need me." Ed trotted a short distance away to a large rock, hoisting himself up onto it and making himself comfortable.

As he children filtered in to the clearing, Ed caught the eye of evil-cat-girl (_Some weird British name... her... Hermione! That was it._), flanked by the other two kids from the train, and she smiled politely and waved when she caught his eye. He did the same in return.

Hagrid led the gray Hippogriff forward, introduced it as Buckbeak, and started in with a variation of the same speech he gave Edward earlier. It wasn't long into the lecture before Ed spotted the troublemaker of the group. He stood toward the back, blond hair slicked back, goons on each side of him, muttering disparaging remarks about the teacher.

"God, this place has gone to the dogs. Lookit this oaf, he can't even teach without a spotter!"

Edward knew the brat was referring to him. In response, he fixed the kid with a glare that would make most soldiers piss their pants in fear. When the kid next caught his eye, he mouthed the words 'watch it' silently. The kid merely grimaced in disgust and turned back toward the front. Ed didn't hear another word out of him, though.

He brought his attention back toward the front, catching sight of the other kid from the train... Harry, wasn't it? The boy was walking hesitantly closer to Buckbeak, slowly extending a hand to pat it's beak. The thing seemed to think he was worthy enough for it's attention, as it stretched it's neck the rest of the way, nuzzling into his hand. Nice job, kid. Ed grinned when, moments later, the kid gave a surprised yelp as Hagrid lifted him onto the beast's back, and it shot off running... straight toward him.

It seemed to know how much ground it needed for takeoff, though, and only skimmed Edward's back when he hurriedly flattened himself to the rock. That didn't stop him from yelling, though. "Jeez, Hagrid! Think you coulda pointed the beast somewhere else for takeoff?" A good amount of the kids laughed. Ed would have been insulted if he hadn't been grinning too.

"Sorry!" Hagrid was smiling as well as he walked over to Ed. "So?" he asked, sotto voce. "How'm I doin'?"

"Great. You might wanna keep an eye on that little blonde punk by the tree, though. He's a walking attitude."

"Ah, I know abou' him. Tha's Draco Malfoy. His ol' man's a school governor, so he thinks he can ge' away with murder. He's always bin trouble. I think yeh scare 'im, tho'. I saw yeh earlier."

"I scare him? Really..." There was a note of deviousness in the last word that made Hagrid laugh as Edward grinned maliciously, with a low, dangerous cackle. At that moment, Buckbeak came back down with his jockey looking windblown, but quite happy nonetheless. Hagrid trotted back over to help him off. Harry wobbled very slightly on the ground, dizzy from the flight. Hagrid steadied the boy, leaning down and talking to him quietly. Ed sighed and let himself relax. This was actually turning out to be pretty fun.

Of course, with that one thought, he jinxed himself. Malfoy strutted forward toward the beast, and Ed knew what would happen before it did. He was already on the ground running when Buckbeak reared back, the class screamed collectively, and Ed knew he was too late. The taloned front paws came down on Malfoy's arm, and Ed just managed to grab the kid's cloak and yank him back before it came down on top of him. Malfoy tumbled, ass over teakettle about twenty feet backwards, and Ed raised his arms in a block, left over right in some subconscious attempt to spare his automail. He only realized it should have been right over left when Buckbeak reared back again and gouged Edward's arm, too. He merely grunted, however, whereas Malfoy shrieked. Hagrid jumped in front of the beast then, tossing a dead ferret a couple dozen feet away to distract it.

Hagrid whirled to face Ed. "Are yeh alrigh'? I dunno wha' go' inteh him-"

"Oh, I do." Ed spat venomously. "This little brat decided he was gonna show off, and ended up gettin' thrown on his ass cos' he didn't listen! And stop yelping like that, you wimp! It's barely a scratch!"

"You need to go to the hospital wing, look at your arm!"Hermione cried, worry etched on her face. Ed raised and twisted his arm a bit, staring at the gouge bemusedly.

"Huh. Oh well. I'll take him, Hagrid, you wrap things up here." Edward hoisted Malfoy up none too gently, walking up toward the school. On his tour with Remus earlier, he'd filed away the location of the hospital wing in his mind, knowing that, with his luck, he'd get to know Madam Pomphrey quite well this year. From here it was up the hill, across the breezeway, through the courtyard, up the stairs and down the hall. Simple enough. It wasn't exactly a pleasant walk, though, between the pain in his arm, adrenaline rush ebbing in favor of tremors, and Malfoy moaning in his ear.

"Oh, will you shut up already. My arm's worse than yours, for pete's sake." All he got was a pathetic whine in response.

When they finally reached the hospital wing, Ed dropped Malfoy unceremoniously onto the first bed he came to, turning around as Madam Pomphrey came bustling out of her office.

"My word, what happened?"

"Hi." Edward lifted his arm as if objectively displaying something that _wasn't_ bleeding profusely. "Hippogriff attack. Take care of him first, though,I think my pain threshold is a bit different from his. Been complaining the whole way here."

He plopped down on a nearby bed and watched her mend Malfoy's arm. All it took was a few muttered spells, and the wound was healed over with pink scar tissue. She deftly wrapped his arm in gauze and bandages as Ed pulled up his sleeve to give her better access to it. She then came over to him and did the same. All he noticed was a burning soreness as the flesh grew back. _So the spell causes the cells to create scar tissue at an accelerated rate. Interesting._

"You'll want to be gentle with it for a while. It'll be a bit sore until it heals completely. Come back tomorrow so I can check up on it." She wound the gauze around his arm, muttering something about 'one day' and 'already getting hurt'.

"Well, it was his fault." Her head whipped up, not knowing she was overheard. "He charged one of those Hippogriffs after Potter walked away from it."

She clicked her tongue. "Those two, always causing trouble. They hate eachother with a passion. So Potter did something and Malfoy wanted to show him up, eh?"

Ed shrugged, taking the new information into account. "Looked like it to me." Honestly, Potter seemed like a nice kid. Just surrounded by unfortunate circumstances.

"I see." She tied the finishing knot on his bandage, turned back to Malfoy, and sighed. "I'll have to contact his parents, I suppose..."

"Right. I'll go ahead and leave, then." He put both hands in his pockets, striding toward the door when Hagrid intercepted him. Edward merely nodded toward Pomphrey when Hagrid asked about Malfoy, and waved off the apologies. "I've had much worse, believe me."

Trudging slowly back down the stairs, he absently looked out the window, letting his mind wander again. Yep, it was official. Murphy's law still haunted his every waking moment.

* * *

Ps: Murphy's law is 'Anything that can go wrong, will'. Yes indeedy, Ed knows Murphy very well. XD


	4. Chapter 3: Enigma

Thankfully, the remainder of Monday and the whole of Tuesday passed without much incident. He spent Monday afternoon and evening arranging the desks and chairs in the classroom, unpacking what little luggage he had (and found that the motion sickness pills weren't the only unwitting hitchhikers, apparently Al snuck a first-aid kit into his trunk, the cheeky little snot), and Tuesday wandering the grounds and crossing paths with a couple of the ghosts. It was slightly creepy, to say the least.

The paintings didn't bother him as much as he thought they would, oddly. They (after the initial shock) became a sort of white noise that came with walking the halls. he'd spent the better part of a day reading in the library (and Madam Pince was every bit the spartan old librarian) about all manner of things, from History of Magic to how Alchemy and magic related to eachother. The only alchemy book he found was old and decrepit, written in Shakespeare-speak, and WAY off base. No wonder they needed somebody to show them how to do it right.

Which was how he found himself now, perched cross-legged on his desk feeling a bit of trepidation about this first jump into alien territory. Scattered on the desk around him were the lesson plan, syllabus, and list of students (which was decidedly short, and hooray, included Percy Weasley). Crazy as it sounded, he was actually tossing around the idea of showing them his arm, as a demonstration of just how bad an alchemic rebound could go, but rejected the notion almost as soon as thinking it up. It would be too much, too soon, both for him and the kids.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when the clocktower chimed again, the 'you should be in class by now' warning going unheeded. The room was deserted, except for him. He had to be lenient, though, this room was in a pretty much remote wing of the castle. On each desk sat a block of white pine, a soft, easily malleable wood, and two sheets of paper. One outlined the instructions, and the other had on it a simple matter-rearrangement array.

Almost as if on cue, the children began filtering in, although there weren't many to 'filter', the class was barely ten students, if even that. As soon as they were seated, he went through the roll call (all present and accounted for), gave a brief introduction, and outlined the first lesson.

"What I want you to do here is just transmute the wood into a different shape, like, a... duck, or something. As long as I can tell what it is, I don't care. I know it sounds stupid, and too easy, but it's a lot more involved than it sounds. You have to make sure one end isn't denser than the other, or it'll be off balance. I'm not gonna grade you on this, just so you know. I just want to see what you can do. Any questions?" A girl at the back raised her hand. He nodded toward her.

"I don't mean to be rude, but where exactly are you from, sir?"

Easy question. He was ready for this one, fake past and all. "I was born and raised in a little village near the Black Forest, in Germany, then I lived in Munich for a few years before moving to New York city with my dad and brother. Anyone else?" No takers this time.

"Alright. You've got the whole period to work, go ahead and start." He walked back to his desk and sat down, sifting through the lesson plan. The previous teacher knew what he was talking about, definitely, but his methods seemed a bit more... disjointed than Edward would like. Since he was the teacher now, he saw no harm in altering the plans.

He was in the midst of rearranging the note pages when a girl near the front of the room squealed in alarm and nearly fell out of her desk, caught by Percy, who sat on her left. Ed quirked an eyebrow, looking up from his work. "You okay over there, Penelope?"

"Is- is it supposed to spark like that?"

The almost-grin faded from Ed's face. "Oh. Yeah, it is. I guess I should have warned you about that. Sorry."

His attention was still on Penelope when an envelope slipped from the pages in his hand, and fell to the table. He frowned, picking the letter up. How'd he miss that the first time around? On the outside, in small, half-print, half-script letters, was his name. He pulled open the flap, unsticking the wax seal, and pulled out a small bit of parchment.

_Dear Mr. Elric,_

_I must say, first and foremost, that I am sorry to not have met you myself, prior to your appointment. I imagine you are quite bewildered by the existence of this world inside a world, it is quite difficult to take in all at once. You need not worry, however; under the watch of my good friend Albus, no harm shall befall you._

_I suppose you are wondering how an alchemist can practice in this world, so I shall explain. Yes, I know of the land you call Amestris, and how one can reach it. The 'Gate', as it is commonly called, is truly a phenomenon. It is the passageway between worlds, yes, but it is also the gate to the afterlife, a world separate from both, where souls of the dead convene._

_Returning to my prior subject, however, the energy necessary to transmute does not come from the souls of those passed travelling through the gate to your world. To the contrary, it comes from inside oneself, the willpower and drive of the soul, making it possible in anyone able. I imagine this comes as quite a shock to you, and I would greatly enjoy meeting you in person to discuss this in more detail. It has been far too long since I have been able to have an intellectual debate with another alchemist, a kindred soul. I look forward to your response._

_Sincerely and with best regards,_

_Nicolas Flamel_

...Nicolas Flamel? Nicolas FUCKING Flamel? THAT was the guy who was gonna teach? Dimly, Edward felt that his jaw was hanging open, as he stared at the letter.

"Professor, are you alright?"

Ed's head snapped up, face pale and shocked. "Fine, yeah..." He muttered, turning back to the letter. _I look forward to your response._ Guess that meant he was expecting a return letter. Not that Edward begrudged it, by any means. What interested him was that if this was indeed THE Nicolas Flamel, he had been living for over six-hundred and fifty years, which meant he had a stone. A Philosopher's stone that required human sacrifice to make. Not to mention, if Dumbledore was his 'good friend', he'd be privy to this information. And he hadn't said a word. That particular set of injustices made anger bubble up in his chest like burning acid. He'd have to have a little _chat_ with Dumbledore later. For now, though, teaching was the task at hand.

* * *

The rest of the class ambled slowly by without any rebounds, thank god, and Edward felt rewarded in his decision to take up the position. As the oldest in the school, seventh-years were expected to be more mature than the other students, and a kind of mutual respect passed between himself and the students. They seemed to be more at-ease with Edward, probably because of the distinct lack of wrinkles on his face, and the easygoing attitude he'd acquired over the past couple of years. True, wisdom of age was a useful trait in a roomful of rowdy teenagers, but the edge Edward had was that he remembered what it was like to be a teenager. How their minds worked, and most importantly, the minute size of their attention spans.

Speaking of attention spans, Ed's own had shrunk when he allowed his mind to wander so aimlessly, and then realized that someone was trying to get his attention.

"Uh... sorry, what?"

Percy was at his desk, a slight flush on his face. "Um... I wanted to- to apologize. You know, for what I said at the bookshop. I swear I didn't mean it like that."

The bookshop... _oh, that 'unprofessional' thing._

Ed adopted a friendly but wry grin. "Let me guess: it sounded a lot better in your head, didn't it?"

Percy sighed, relaxing a bit at the jab. "Yes, I... sometimes I just don't think about what I say before I say it, and I make a complete arse of myself. It happens more often than I'd like to admit."

"Nah, don't worry about it. Happens to me all the time. My brother's always railing at me for my lack of tact."

Finally, a sheepish smile found itself on Percy's lips. "So... are we okay now?"

"Yeah, fine." With that, the younger of the two hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and started for the exit. "And Percy?"

The teenager turned back toward him expectantly, almost at the door. Ed lowered a brow slightly. "Try to loosen up a bit, okay? You're still a kid. Enjoy it while you can."

Percy laughed slightly. "I'll try, but I can't make any promises. See you next week, Edward." And with a wave, he was gone.

* * *

Thursday late morning found him sipping moodily at a cup of what he supposed could pass for coffee in the staffroom. He liked his coffee to give him a kick in the face. This particular (weak) brew barely gave him a love tap. And the fatigue only made him grumpier than he had been in class, trying to keep a particularly bratty group of miscreants under control by means of punishment threats. It came as no surprise to him that they were Slytherins, as a result of comparing names of Dark Wizards from magical history books with ones mentioned in Hogwarts: A History. Nearly every one, with very little exception, had been in Slytherin during their time in school. It was something of an epidemic.

And one of said dark wizards was his only company at the moment, the greasy Slytherin house-head named Snape. He hadn't yet exchanged a word with the man currently lurking in the only non-sunbathed corner of the room, and Edward was perfectly content with that particular fact. The man absolutely exuded disdain of having to fraternize with others who weren't as hermit-like as himself, and it made Ed wonder just what kind of teacher one could be with such an isolationist attitude.

Recalling the previous subject, however, it was only after he yelled quite loudly at the children to shut the hell up that they finally obliged, probably due to shock because a teacher had never yelled at them quite like that before. Thankfully, they had remained just as quiet throughout the rest of the lesson, but left Ed with a raging migraine and only one kind of painkiller to treat it with. He'd downed two pills that had been in the first-aid kit with his decaf coffee, and was currently basking in the sunlight streaming in the ceiling-high windows and trying to ignore the rattling wardrobe at the opposite end of the room when the door to the hall opened, revealing his one friend he'd made since arrival. And he seemed to have a shadow. A lot of shadows, in fact.

"In, please." Remus said pleasantly to his shadows, who filed in ahead of him, glancing around the staffroom first, then flicking their eyes toward the two previous inhabitants of the room, one of which stood, sneering unpleasantly.

"Leave it open, Lupin, I'd rather not witness this." He strode toward the exit, black cloak billowing, shooting a nasty glare toward Ed as he passed. Edward returned it with just as much intensity, silently promising that if Snape started something, he would finish it. He won the staredown, Snape breaking eye contact quickly and turning the corner outside the door.

"Well. I'm not a greasy bat with an attitude problem, so I think I'll hang around." There was a nervous smattering of laughter from some children, dirty glares from others. Ed shared a grin with Remus as he walked by, hopping onto the counter near the door. He only then noticed that, at the tail of the group was Malfoy, this time with his arm (still) wrapped in bandages. Apparently the brat's father was trying to get Buckbeak put down. Ed wished he could help prepare for the inevitable trial, but he knew next to nothing about the legal infrastructure of this world, so there wasn't much he could do.

Speaking of magical creatures, Remus was now going on about something called a 'boggart', a shapeless being that takes the form of whatever one fears the most. This, Ed had read about in the library, and was why he had retreated to the far corner. He had a vague idea of what his greatest fear was, and he didn't think the kids needed to see a dead body in the middle of a classroom. Or any other room, for that matter.

After reciting the spell to weaken a boggart, Remus called one boy forward (Gryffindor, by the looks of his tie) who was pale and round-faced, and quite honestly, looked terrified to be singled out.

"Neville, what is it you fear the most?" The boy muttered something incomprehensible. "Sorry, didn't catch that..." Remus leaned a bit closer.

Neville was barely audible this time. "Professor Snape."

Ed snorted into his coffee. Not surprising _that_ guy could incite fear in children.

Remus then asked whether or not the boy lived with his grandmother, and what she wore... where the heck was he going with this?

Remus leaned and whispered something in Neville's ear, stepped back, and opened the wardrobe with a flick of his wand. Out stepped what would appear to be Snape (complete with dissatisfied grimace), advancing on Neville, who readied his wand and said, tremulously, "R-riddikulus!"

Edward then confirmed that, yes, coffee did burn when snorted through the nose, no matter how weak the brew. At that spell, the room exploded with laughter at the sight of Snape wearing a green tweed women's suit and skirt, a hat with a dead vulture perched on it, heels, a purse, and a fox skin hung about his neck. Ed dissolved into a fit of coughing, sputtering laughter as tears streamed down his face, and he couldn't tell if it was from the hilarity of the image, or his throat being grated raw.

Remus came over and leaned against the counter next to Ed, grinning but concerned. "Don't hack up a lung, now."

Ed was so surprised at the meant-to-be-offhand comment that his coughing ceased abruptly. That one innoecent jab brought Alfons' face into his mind, and with it came the guilt. If Alfons had died on November 8th, 1923, then it couldn't have been due to his illness. After meeting the boy at Hermann Oberth's in 1921, Alfons had no previous exposure to the fumes that would give him cancer, he'd been taking care of his mother before his uncle took her in. The cancer would have taken years to erode his lungs to the point of collapse. That was how Ed knew that Alfons (kind, softspoken Alfons) had been murdered. He died trying to return Edward to his home, only to have him come back, albeit flung sixty-odd years into the future.

"Edward? You're spacing out again. Talk to me."

"Uh- sorry." He chuckled, trying to brush it off. "Not enough sleep."

Remus continued looking, though, concerned but stubborn. "That's not it. You looked... haunted. Tortured... if I said something to upset you, I'm sorry." He sat for a moment, glanced back to the students to make sure all was in order. After waiting for a response, he spoke again. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Ed sighed, defeated. He slouched, putting a hand over his half-lidded eyes. Damn it, the man was too perceptive. It was like having an older Al at his side. "A... friend of mine had lung cancer and died a few years ago. I guess I hadn't gotten over it like I thought I had. That's all."

"...I'm sorry."

"'S'fine. You couldn't have-"

Ed broke off when Remus leapt away from the counter, running over to intercept the boggart that advanced on the Potter kid. He stiffened subconsciously when he saw the form it had taken; a dementor. When Remus leapt between the two, it transformed into a silvery, cratered orb that Ed recognized as the moon. _Of course. He's a werewolf, it's no wonder the moon scares him._ The class was abruptly broken off then, the children dismissed to gather their things and proceed to their next lesson. Remus shot him an apologetic glance on his way out, tailing his students, leaving a fairly confused Edward in his wake.

He couldn't say for sure when his migraine vanished. He hadn't even noticed.

* * *

The days rolled along, bringing with them a sort of relaxed mood of routine happenings- bizarre to the untrained eye, but routine for the parties concerned- and Ed nearly became complacent before, inevitably, something horrible happened.

It was the day of Halloween (a useless holiday, in Ed's mind), and Ed had found another rare instance in which he could spend a little time chatting with Remus. He looked worse than usual, though.

"Oh, don't worry about me." The smile only seemed to accentuate the dark circles beneath his eyes. "It's a you-know-what tonight, and I always get fatigued and achy the day before."

"Ohhh, I see. Anything I can do to help? Al says I'm pretty good with shoulder massages."

"No, you don't have to…agh." Remus slumped as soon as Ed's thumbs dug in to his muscles, laying his head on the table. "Well. Al's right, I must say."

Ed chuckled. "Thanks. It's about all this fake arm is good for, other than bludgeoning people…Jeez, Remus, you're tense. Anything bothering you?"

Remus hesitated for a moment before answering. "Erm…no, nothing in particular…"

Ed stopped the massage, hopping onto Remus' desk. "Liar. Come on, it's not fair that I'm the only one who has to 'fess up."

"…Oh, fine, I guess you're right. It's a long story though."

"We've got ti-"

Ed was cut off by a disembodied voice (the magic version of a PA, he guessed) loud enough to drown anyone out. "All staff to the entrance hall immediately. Students, remain where you are."

Ed and Remus shared a confused glance before leaving the classroom at a fast trot, which wasn't too far from the entrance hall, but just far enough to leave Ed panting lightly when they joined the knot of teachers outside the great hall.

"What's going on?"

Dumbledore wasted no time. "Sirius Black has somehow made it past the dementors guarding the school, and infiltrated the castle. We are to search the grounds, but first, all house heads bring your students here." Sprout, McGonnagall, Snape and Flitwick departed. "Mr. Filch, search the first floor." The jowly old man nodded and walked off, cat trailing behind him. "Remus, you are excused, and Edward, search the Astronomy tower and the surrounding rooms. I trust you know where it is?"

Ed nodded, not trusting his voice at the moment. He left the group at a run, long black coat billowing behind him. As soon as he turned the corner, he yanked off his right glove with his teeth and transmuted his arm into a short sword, for good measure. He'd left his handgun back in his quarters and had no time to retrieve it now; Black might be gone by then.

He kept his wits about him as he ran up the stairs, investigating the landing at the summit thoroughly before going back down and poking his head into every nearby classroom.

Having deemed the Astronomy tower clear, Ed took a slight detour on his way back, ducking into his quarters for his handgun, concealing it in one of the inner pockets of his coat, after transmuting his arm back to it's natural state. Better safe than sorry, he bet a bullet could move faster than any curse. Whether or not it was moving in the right direction, however, was another matter. He should have gotten Hawkeye to teach him how to shoot while he still could, even though he hated the thought of having to use one.

Dumbledore was still inside the the Great Hall when Edward returned, walking amongst the students, Percy lingering importantly at his side.

"Astronomy tower's clear, sir." The last word tumbled out of his mouth of its own accord, a force of habit from all his years in the military.

"There is no need to call me 'sir', Edward; I am not your commanding officer."

So Hohenheim told him that, too. "Um… sorry. Habit."

Dumbledore nodded. "The surrounding rooms as well?"

"Yes. No sign he was even there."

"Thank you."

At that moment, Snape strode in. "Filch's done the first floor and the dungeons, Headmaster, all clear. The third floor has been searched as well."

"And Professor Trelawney's room? The owlery?"

"All searched…"

"Very well, Severus. I didn't really expect Black to linger."

"Have you any theory as to how he got in, Professor?"

"Many, each as unlikely as the last."

Snape was barely moving his lips now, as though trying to block Percy and Edward out. "You remember the conversation we had, Headmaster, just before-ah- the start of term?"

"I do, Severus." There was a slightly dangerous tone in Dumbledore's voice now. Ed's brow furrowed a bit. Where was this going?

"It seems almost impossible that Black could have entered the school without inside help. I did express…concern…when you appointed-"

"I do not believe a single person inside this castle would have helped Black enter it." His tone was sharp and clipped, leaving no room for argument. "I must go down to the dementors. I told them I would inform them when our search was complete."

Percy spoke up. "Didn't they want to help, sir?"

"Oh yes, they did. But I'm afraid no dementor will cross the threshold of this castle while I am headmaster."

Percy looked a bit ashamed of himself, this was no doubt one of those 'open mouth, insert foot' situations he referred to. Ed caught his eye with a knowing glance, to which the boy smiled sheepishly. Snape looked at the Headmaster with an expression of silent contempt as the older man walked out, and Edward gleaned just enough from their coded conversation to ask this question:

"Why do you hate Remus so much? He hasn't done anything to you."

Snape whirled around, with a kind of disappointed surprise that Edward was still there. His disgust quickly morphed into a sneer, though, as he said in a taunting tone "Ah, I see the Professor hasn't exactly been forthcoming with his new… friend."

The mere sound of that voice made Ed's teeth grind audibly. "Watch it. I'd advise you not to badmouth him in front of me. As a matter of fact, I think you're acting more suspicious than he is."

"So he hasn't told you about his…relation to Black yet, has he?"

"Enough with the dramatic pauses already. And if Remus wants to tell me something, he can tell me himself. I don't need to hear any garbled bullshit from the likes of you."

Thoroughly pissed now, Ed purposely bumped Snape's shoulder as he passed, intending on heading back to his quarters. He groaned piteously as he cut through his classroom. A vein running from the base of his neck all the way though his temple, and coursing from there to his eye had just throbbed painfully. A sure predecessor of a migraine. Just great.


	5. Chapter 4: Painful Truths

Tongue-in-cheek, Edward was having quite a trial of attempting to open the door to Remus' quarters while balancing a tray of food in his arms. Luckily, after a few false starts where he almost got the door open while balancing on one leg, Remus came to the door looking exhausted and groggy, but grateful nonetheless.

"Jeez, You look horrible. Got you breakfast."

"Oh… thank you. Do you want to come in?"

"Sure. No class today?"

Remus turned to Ed, and gave him a 'look'. "You have to ask?"

Ed chuckled. "Right. Stupid question."

Ed sat on the couch while Remus nibbled sleepily on some toast. He was feeling pretty tired himself, his eyes blurred every time he blinked. Not that it mattered much, the scenery beyond the windows was obscured by the rain anyway. The only sound was the tapping the rain made on the windows, and Ed was beginning to get a little uncomfortable in the silence. "Hey Remus, isn't there a Quidditch match today? I feel sorry for whoever has to play in this weather."

Remus snapped out of his reverie, and took a moment to respond. "Yes, that's right. Now, it's Gryffindor . It was supposed to be Slytherin and Gryffindor, but Slytherin says Malfoy's arm is still injured." He rolled his eyes at the last. "Um… I hate to ask this of you in this weather, but… could you keep an eye on Harry for me? I'd like to keep a watch on him, considering the fact that Black was in the castle last night, but…"

"Yeah, I wanted to see a match anyway. And a cold is the last thing you need right now." Another anecdote in Dumbledore's letter concerned the circumstances that bonded Harry and Black. The cliff-notes version, at least, but even that sounded horrific. No wonder Molly felt the need to mother the boy.

"Thanks. I really appreciate it."

"No problem." He produced the pocketwatch from his coat, studying the time. " In the meantime, I've gotta go, I've still got class today."

He waved, and trotted out the door, heading at a leisurely pace back to his own classroom.

* * *

The weather really was disgusting. His boots squelched with each step, and the wind was blowing the rain at his front so hard it came in sideways. His pants, from the knees to the feet, were drenched before he finally made it to the winding sheltered staircase that led up to the Faculty box.

He'd given up trying to keep his hood up in the whipping gusts outside, and as a result, his hair was plastered haphazardly to his face. He squished over to a seat fairly close to the front, but still under the awning so he could dry off.

No sooner than he shrugged off his coat, Aurora Sinistra walked over to him. His bickering partner.

Showing off that amorphous grin, she started with a jab. "You look like a drowned cat, you know."

"Gee, thanks." In rebuttal, he shook his head, dog-like, splattering Aurora with water.

"Augh!" She laughed, swatting him on the shoulder when he stopped, bangs slung over his eyes, grinning like an idiot.

He tried wringing out his hair, but after two half-hearted attempts, he exhaled a sigh in the form of 'Oh, screw it' and clapped his hands and put them to his body, evaporating the water into steam. The box wasn't terribly full at the moment, so he didn't warrant too many stares.

Aurora ended up sitting to the right of him, between him and a young black student with dreadlocks whom he'd seen with the Weasley twins. "Commentator." she said.

The match started soon thereafter, players swerving and swaying in the high winds. Sometime during the match, he'd migrated to stand under the awning on the ground at the base of the stands, affording him an unimpeded view. He had a hard time picking Harry out, and only managed to after a time-out had been called, watching him rise to circle the field. He said he'd keep an eye on the boy, and he'd damn well do it, come hell or high water. The latter seemed more likely, though.

Suddenly, the Gryffindor captain yelled at Harry, who redirected his attention to the Hufflepuff seeker, who was pelting up the field after a small, shimmery golden thing. Harry spun and shot after him. Almost as soon as he did, dementors glided onto the field. They converged on the poor boy, and he fell from his broom, with a good fifty feet between himself and the ground.

_Aw, shit_. Ed broke into a run, splashing across the field as silver animals streaked toward the dementors, driving them away. Patronuses. He put both his feet in front of him, falling into a slide to get under Harry in time, and just barely caught him. The kid landed squarely on his right leg (his flesh leg) and he felt his shinbone snap clear in half at the impact. He bit down on a scream, pushing his upper half upright to check the boy for injuries. Pulse was slow, skin clammy and cold. No broken bones that he could find through a quick lookover, thankfully.

There were more splashes as the Gryffindor team touched down along with Cedric Diggory, the Hufflepuff captain and seeker, whose face Ed recognized from one of his classes. He held the snitch in his hand, tossing it to parts unknown as he helped Oliver Wood hoist Harry off of Ed.

The Weasley twins grabbed both of his arms and brought him to his feet, FredorGeorge ducking under his arm to hold him up when he favored his leg. The other one made a disgusted face at the state of Ed's calf when he lifted up his pants leg to look at it. There were broken blood vessels around the fracture, running jagged spikes of pain clear up to his hip, and down to his ankle. "Dammit. Al's gonna shoot me."

"You really do get beaten up all the time, dontcha?"

Ed growled at the kid as the teachers finally came along, as well as Madam Hooch, who declared Hufflepuff the winner. Diggory protested, wanting a rematch, but Hooch denied, although not happily, citing the rules.

As Hagrid carried Harry up to the Hospital wing, McGonnagall took a look at Edward's leg. "Is it broken?"

"Pretty sure, yeah."

She 'hmm'ed and had him hold the cuff of his pants up, balancing on FredorGeorge's body as she waved her wand once, and a splint appeared, binding tightly to his leg. He tested it, only wincing a bit at the pain. "That's good, thanks."

He limped up to the school, Fred still under his arm, supporting him, even though he protested ("Walk? Mate, you can barely_ stand_ on that thing."). It was a laborious trip to the infirmary, and he flopped onto the nearest bed, waiting for Madam Pomphrey to finish up with Harry, whose team was huddled at the door, along with Ron and Hermione.

She stepped away, looking at the group exasperatedly. "He'll be fine. It was only a few demento-" she broke off when she caught sight of Ed. "You again? It's hardly been two months!"

"What can I say? I break easily." She sighed ruefully, looking his leg over critically. "Or maybe I'm getting myself hurt on purpose because I have a crush on yYEAAAGH!" He burst out when she pressed down hard on the break, looking up at him like she was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to punch him. "Jesus, woman, I was only _joking_."

She scoffed noncommittally, carefully pulling his boot off. "Hold it out flat. And don't move."

He did the first part easily enough, and she quickly banished the splint, holding his leg steady just above the ankle. The second part was harder. Once she started to work, the bone itself started burning, like a chicken pox infection might. His toes twitched of their own accord, and he only barely reined in the desire to yank his leg away. The muscles around the bone twitched, and he exhaled a quiet whine.

"Hold still."

"It itches!"

"It means your bone is knitting back together, and it won't go right if you don't stop _moving_! Don't make me knock you out."

His jaw snapped shut. Yep, add one more to the List of Women Who Really Scare Ed. Numbers one and two were Izumi and Winry.

"There." She said, pressing again on the break after she'd finished. "Does it hurt anymore?"

"Sore. But that's it. Will I be able to walk on it?"

In response, she conjured another splint. "Be easy on it for a month or so. The bone tissue is still fresh, so it's more prone to break. Don't do any running or fighting."

"…Yes ma'am."

He stood, pressing gingerly down on his right foot, and walked with only a small limp toward the door.

Again, traversing the stairs was slow work, and he hopped down most of them, keeping an eye on his left foot. He couldn't feel the thing, after all, and it would be a problem if his foot landed wrong and he fell.

As soon as he reached the bottom of the stairs, the exhaustion slammed into him so heavily it made him wobble on his feet. He flailed for a moment before catching himself on the wall. Summoning up the last of his strength, he hobbled quickly to his room, barely hitting the pillow before he was out.

* * *

It was nearing the end of fall when a subtle change occurred in Ed's daily routine. Minerva McGonnagall had approached him at breakfast, asking him if he would like to chaperone on the second Hogsmeade trip of the year, and, curious soul that he was, he couldn't say no. He'd only missed the first because of an unfortunate cold, the likes of which hit like a sledgehammer and remained for a week. This time, even though winter's preemptive cold snap was wreaking havoc with his steel joints, he wanted to see more of the village than the train station in the middle of a _monsoon_. He came prepared, however. He had bought a few medical heating pads that were usually used to soothe aching muscles before his departure from the USA, and carefully applied them to his automail ports just before leaving his quarters. They would last about six hours, but he shoved one or two extra in the inside pockets of his trenchcoat anyway.

And now, walking out to the courtyard in front of the clocktower, he felt good about this choice; he could feel the heat blossoming outward from the pad, warming the steel where it met skin to stave off the possible frostbite. That was one good innovation of this world, he thought, right up there with elevators. If not for those, he wouldn't have been able to work his previous job, over twenty flights off the ground.

He smiled congenially as he approached Minerva, who almost-but-not-quite returned the greeting, a brief upward twitch of her lips was all she gave. He'd been told that this woman was one of the most strict employees at Hogwarts (And Madam Pince just beat out Pomphrey for second), but ever since he grew taller, he found himself being kinder to others -probably because he wasn't waiting for a short jab- and that sometimes resulted in him charming the pants off of people. Not that he would want to charm Minerva's pants off. Quite frankly, when she got into a tirade, Edward saw a brief flash of Izumi-esque wrath, and silently vowed never to cross the woman. Put simply, she scared him. A lot. His list of scary women was filling up rather more quickly than he liked.

"So, is this everyone?" His breath came out as puffs in the air; he imagined the temperature must be below forty degrees Fahrenheit.

"Almost. Filch is collecting the rest of the forms."

Ed surveyed the crowd in the silence that followed, surprised to see that a few of the older girls were just short of gawking at him. He felt a bit of heat rise unbidden to his cheeks, slightly embarrassed at the attention. Having been an- apparently- attractive man living in the most densely populated city in the United States, working all hours of the night, he'd gotten his fair share (or perhaps more) of stares, catcalls, and near molestations by women in the wee hours of the morning. Well, the last had only happened once when he missed the train home and had to cut through a not-too-great part of town after working overtime on a visit to a wealthy client's home to deliver a translated manuscript he'd just finished. The woman -at least he hoped it was a woman- had cornered him against an alley wall. That was not something he'd prefer to remember.

Having gathered all the permission slips, Minerva, Edward, Remus, other chaperones and the throng of students finally departed for Hogsmeade, navigating the trail they had come up when they first arrived. It was much less muddy than on the night of September first.

"So...um, what do we do? Just wander around and keep tabs on the kids?"

"Yes, that about covers it. If they misbehave, we shall know." Remus said the last sentence with such an air of aloofness that Ed wondered just exactly how they monitored the children.

His cold-weather boots crunched in the frost just outside the village, and he shuddered from the cold, half tempted to pull his arms out of the lined trenchcoat and huddle them closer to his body.

When they reached the village, Ed chose to stick to Remus for a while, if only for fear he would get lost. He brought him to a pub called the Three Broomsticks, outside which an older (yet attractive) woman was fixing the sign that hung above the door.

"Madam Rosmerta!" He called to the woman. She turned and spotted him, smiling almost the way a big sister would.

"Remus, hello! I haven't seen you for years!" She trotted over, hugging him tightly. "Oh, how are you? That horrible woman has made it even harder for you to find a job now, hasn't she?"

"Yes, regrettably. Professor Dumbledore was exceedingly kind to hire me considering the circumstances."

"Aw, Albus has always been a-" She cut off, eyes flitting to Edward appreciatively. ":Oh, who's this sexy young thing?"

It took Ed a moment to realize she was referring to him. "Wa-" Ed's face flamed bright red. Every time someone tried to flirt with him, his brain melted into a pool of bubbling goo.

"_Rosmerta_!" Remus was blushing too, perhaps sympathetically. "He's a teacher!"

"Oh, I'm sorry. You are handsome, though." She patted his cheek (the one on his face, mind you), with a wink that made Ed feel like she was deliberately doing this just to see him squirm, and invited the both of them in for a butterbeer.

"Er… Remus, what's a butterbeer?" Ed asked after his brain scraped itself back together.

"It's a drink."

"Is it like butter_milk_?" He asked warily.

Remus looked at him incredulously. "Eww, no. Trust me, you'll like it."

They found a table toward the window, shrugging out of their coats and waiting for the drinks. "Don't think I've forgotten our talk from the night Black broke in. I'm still waiting."

Remus looked up, obviously having hoped he would forget. He sighed in mock melodrama. "Dammit."

Ed laughed before he spotted Rosmerta coming over with the drinks, and he immediately blushed and became tongue-tied.

Rosmerta laughed at his distress. "I haven't even said anything yet!"

He had no response to that. Not a coherent one, anyway. He settled for fumbling with his wallet, and didn't even get the money out before she slapped his hand. He yelped, jerking his head up- no,_ further_ up, where her_ head_ was- to see her smiling at him. "Free of charge, for a pretty face like yours."

If it was possible, he blushed harder. She almost leered at him as she set the drinks down, winking as she walked away. "By the way, you have an adorable laugh."

"Rosmerta, stop messing with him!"

She stuck her tongue out at Remus as she disappeared into the crowd by the bar. Ed turned slowly to Remus, who sighed in exasperation. "Sorry about that. She's a bit…odd."

"Yeah, no shit, Remus. Does she always do that?"

"To every handsome face that wanders in. Face it, Ed, you're a looker."

He growled, going pink. "It's creepy hearing it from another guy."

Remus gave him a deadpan look before sighing. "…Shut up and drink."

And he did. The drink was warm (which was strange, he expected it to be cold and at least somewhat alcoholic since it had 'beer' in the name), the kind of warm that made you shiver happily and want to curl up and sleep.

"You're right, this is good." He took a larger swig this time, sinking into his chair.

Remus looked up and chuckled. "Ed, you have a…" he trailed off, tapping at his lip.

He swiped his sleeve across it, and Remus made a disgusted face. "There are napkins, you know."

"Eh." He sipped idly at the foamy drink, gazing out the window. Try as he might, he just couldn't stop thinking about what Snape said. He didn't want to believe that Remus would help a serial killer reach his next target. He desperately wanted to ask, but conversely didn't want to admit that Snape's words bothered him, either, seeing how he'd so vehemently defended Remus. Luckily, he didn't need to, as Remus seemed to be having a bit of internal struggle and finally caved.

"Ed, I think you should know a little of what's been going on around here, considering you're right in the middle of it. You know what Black did to get himself put in jail, right?"

He nodded. "Killed twelve muggles and his best friend."

"Yes, but…" It looked as though it was hard for him to talk about this. "Other than killing Peter, he also sold James and Lily Potter to Voldemort."

"'Peter'?" Ed repeated, frowning. "You sound awfully familiar with him."

"Well…" He sighed in a defeated fashion. "That's because… I went to school with James, Lily, Peter and Sirius."

Ed's heart sank. "You were friends with Black?"

Remus looked almost ashamed of himself. "Yes. But if I'd known how he'd turn out…"

He took a few moments to compose himself. "The four of us were very close. James and Sirius even came up with nicknames. We became known around the school as the 'Marauders'. Peter was always a little dull, mentally speaking. Of course, James and Sirius were the friends I mentioned who dragged me into trouble with them, but they wooed and flattered the teachers to the point where they never wanted to punish them." He laughed ruefully. "Manipulative bastards. Anyway. Once James and Lily found out that Voldemort had marked them for death, they want into hiding. They hid themselves with a Fidelius charm, which requires one person not being hidden to act as 'secret-keeper'. And Sirius was theirs. Usually, unless the secret-keeper divulges the location of those being hidden, they can remain unseen indefinitely, even if the one searching for them is standing right in front of them."

"So Sirius was a follower of Voldemort?" Remus hesitated pointedly, making Ed wonder. "Do you believe he's innocent, Remus?"

Remus looked up from the table, and Ed was surprised to see tears standing in his eyes. "God, Ed, I _want_ to, he and James were like brothers...! But just look at how the evidence is piled against him…"

"Evidence isn't everything." Ed said simply. "I, personally, am not convinced he's innocent, but then again, I never met him. It's a fact of life, governments will always defer to laws rather than ethics when the two don't coincide."

"That's a part of it too. You see, when he was taken in, they never gave him a trial. I suppose it was because of the demand from the public to round up all of his supporters and punish them, but as a result, many people who were coerced and blackmailed into servitude ended up in jail as well. It's still a delicate subject so soon after, so not many people want to address it yet."

"So you think he was coerced?"

"No, he's too smart for that. If there's one thing I clearly remember about Sirius, it was that he was always two steps ahead of his enemies. The most believable explanation would be that he was framed. But then, considering the circumstances, the only other suspect would be Peter."

"…You're gonna have to explain that one."

"Well… from what I hear, the day Sirius and Peter met up on that street, Sirius was chasing him, and Peter berated him for betraying James and Lily. Then, the street exploded right under Peter, and one finger was all that the authorities could find. But here's the thing: One bystander who survived said that Sirius looked as if he'd misplaced something. He wasn't armed immediately before the explosion. He couldn't find his wand, thus he never had it out. Peter did. But then again, this is just hearsay and gossip, so…"

"That does put a gaping hole in the story. Unless the explanation fabricated for the muggles was true, and it really was a gas main explosion, though I sincerely doubt it."

"Maybe." He sighed loudly. "Dammit, I don't know. I never know."

There was a lengthy silence. "Thanks for listening. There aren't many people I can confide in, and that's been eating at me for a long time."

"Nah." Ed waved a hand nonchalantly. "Sometimes all you need to relieve a little stress is to ramble. Like I said before, I've got secrets of my own that the general public is better off not knowing."

"Speaking of… I just spilled my life story. Equivalent Exchange says you should return the favor."

Ed jerked his head up. "_What?_"

"I've read every book in the school library. Apparently the one thing _Alchemie and Mysticisme_ managed to get right was that to get, you have to give. I know more than you think, Ed." He said enigmatically.

"Jeez. I haven't heard that phrase from anybody else for a long time." He snorted. "Look, you're probably gonna think I'm insane anyway, if I tell you the truth."

Remus leaned over the table. "Try me."

Ed sighed. "If you insist. But can we do this someplace less crowded? We are talking intimate life details, here."

Remus looked around. The bar had become quite busy since they entered, nearly all the tables were full. He gave an affirmative, and they bade Rosmerta goodbye ("You come back sometime, sweetheart, we need more attractive young men like yourself here!"). Ed tripped over the threshold trying to keep her from hugging him, but failed quite embarrassingly. She squeezed him rather tightly, which meant a certain two soft things were squashed to his back, and it didn't help much that she was a, er... well-endowed woman, if vindictive. Thankfully, Remus swatted her away, and the only casualty was Ed's dignity.

Only once they had gotten reasonably far away from the bar did Ed's face stop burning in the bitingly cold breeze. They sat on a large rock near the edge of the woods, just close enough to still keep a cursory eye on the students, and Ed took a moment to arrange his thoughts, trying to remember what happened where, and before what. At length, he sighed, and started with a fairly innocuous statement. "I'm sure you've gathered I'm not from around here, if my accent is any indication. Where do you think I'm from?"

Remus considered the question. "America?"

"Nope. Farther out than that."

"Asia?"

"Farther."

"Well, that's about as far away as you can get fro-" He caught the implication. "Are you saying you're an alien?" He looked at Ed doubtfully.

"I said you'd say I was insane. But rest assured, I come in peace, I am human, and I didn't come here in a flying saucer."

"Uh-huh."

"Really! I mean it."

"Riiiight." Remus drawled, with an expression that clearly said he thought he was being led on. "Go on."

"Well, This world and my world are connected through a sort of 'gate'. I'm not sure anymore what purpose it serves"- he only said so because of Flamel's letter- "but passing through that is what allows me to transmute without a circle. As a result, so can my dad and brother." He breathed in deeply and sighed. "So. That covers how I got here. Now you want me to start from the beginning, right?"

"Yup."

So he did.

"I was born in a country called Amestris on the other side of the gate. My hometown is in the eastern region, it's a place called Risembool with about five hundred residents. Pretty quiet. Boring. The most excitement that place ever saw in recent memory was the annual sheep festival."

Remus arched a brow. "Sheep?"

"Yeah. They were a pretty big supplier of wool to the military for uniforms and the like." Ed elaborated. "My mother's name was Trisha Elric. About a year after she and Hohenheim- my dad, they weren't married- had me, they had another son. My little brother, Alphonse. Things were... nice, for a while, and then he left. I know why he did now, and we've mended our relationship, but I resented him for a long time. I think I'm still bitter over the fact that we sent I-don't-even-know-how-many letters out when her health was failing, and he still didn't come back in time for her funeral. I didn't see him again until six years after she died."

"I'm sorry."

Ed took a breath, and shook his head. "It's been over ten years since then. And we were never totally alone, because there was a woman down the street who was the grandmother of our best friend who pretty much took care of us after mom died. We'd go over to their house for dinner almost every night, and she'd send us home with food to put in the icebox for the next morning." His voice was warm and fond when he spoke of Pinako. Not something he would have expected of himself when speaking of the crotchety old hag, but absence really _did_ make the heart grow fonder.

"Al and I had always been interested in Alchemy. 'Our father's sons', mom always said. She was so proud of us for that. We went away and trained for a year under a woman who could do the most amazing things with alchemy, and when we came back, we were bound and determined to bring our mother back from the dead." He said, shaking his head bitterly. "Two young, naive boys living alone with no one around to keep them from doing something stupid."

Remus' eyes slowly grew sharper. "You tried to revive your mother?"

Edward nodded, shamefully. "Yeah. I know now that it's impossible- dead is dead, and there's nothing that can change that. It almost killed the both of us. Alphonse's soul and body were ripped from one another, and I lost my left leg in the rebound that occurred because we tried to do something so foolish and risky. I had to give up my arm to get Al's soul back and lash it to a suit of armor that happened to be nearby."

Remus had grown pale in the last few minutes. "And how old were you in all of this?"

"Eleven. Al was ten." He said, staring at his metal palm. "He carried me over to our friend's grandmother, Pinako Rockbell, who happened to be in the business of fabricating prosthetic limbs, called 'automail', and they managed to keep me from bleeding to death." He said, closing his steel fingers into a fist. "That was the absolute lowest point in my life. I had, in one single night, destroyed my brother's childhood, failed in reviving our mother, and nearly killed myself in the process, rendering myself a cripple. How the hell's _that_ for equivalent exchange?"

Remus was silent, staring at him with a shocked sort of empathy. "I... I can't even imagine that. I'd have lost all hope if that happened to me."

Edward chuckled bitterly. "That's the thing- I did. I was wheelchair-bound, with my only remaining family in a hollow metal husk, with three of his senses robbed from him. He couldn't even _sleep_ anymore. I didn't want to be alive." He said, looking up. "And then a man from the military came around. Lieutenant Colonel Roy Mustang, State Alchemist. He'd erroneously received one of the letters we'd sent out to our father a year and a half previous, and since we neglected to date it, he didn't realize how long it had been since it was sent out. He was an acquaintance of our father's and wanted to see if he could do anything for us at all. When he discovered what had happened, he agreed to keep it a secret, as human transmutation can merit a death penalty in Amestris, and offered me the chance to become a State Alchemist myself."

Here, he reached into his pocket and absently pulled his watch out. He stared at the lion on the outer cover. "That very night, after he'd left, I told Pinako I wanted automail. The surgery took a two weeks, and the rehabilitation almost a year. By the next, I was on a train to the capital to take the exam. Mustang had been promoted to Colonel by then, and did some manipulative things that allowed me to take the test even though I was only twelve years old. I passed, and was given this watch."

"...I see now why you're so fond of it."

"I don't think 'fond' is the right word." He said, holding the watch up so Remus could see the crest and lion. "This is the symbol of the dictatorship that had a stranglehold on our country for a good forty years or so, while Fuhrer Bradley was in power. He was a ruthless, genocidal warmonger, no matter how charismatic and benign he appeared to be on the homefront." Edward's voice grew cold. "You know he engineered the murder of an entire race of people who were legal citizens of the country? That massacre is what killed my best friend's parents, and led the Ishbalans, the people who were vilified, to set Risembool on fire because of our status as a supplier of the military. He used State Alchemists as human weapons, Mustang included, and it resulted in a lot of lasting scars on everyone involved.

"But I'm getting off-track. Yes, I was made a State Alchemist. I used the status and money that I was given to research a way to restore my brother's body, and I kept searching for almost four years. They never came after me and told me to kill for them until then." He said, his tone growing bitter again. "Just a few months before that, a man I'd met through the military was killed by Bradley's familiars, because apparently he was getting a little too close to uncovering the real cause behind the massacre in Ishbal. I didn't know that at the time, but he'd been doing that research as a favor to me. And after that... a lot of things changed. I realized that the man we all thought was our leader, looking out for the country, was really operating under orders from someone else. She had a group of creatures that couldn't die except under very special circumstances, and used them to engineer mass amounts of bloodshed to create a Philosopher's Stone that she could use to prolong her life. Ishbal was one such example."

"So... let me get this straight... She was trying to do that again? Kill large amounts of people for what, exactly?"

"The key ingredient in the Philosopher's Stone is human life. Lots of it. That is what gives it it's alchemic power. It's what I'd been searching for to restore my brother, until I found that out. I was desperate, but I wouldn't murder people to accomplish my goals. Once I uncovered who was behind it, I decided that she was too dangerous to be left alone, and tried to stop her before it happened again... but I failed." Now, his tone was that of self-loathing. "I deserted the military without asking Mustang for a shred of help, and almost ten thousand soldiers were killed in the creation of a new stone. And I'm still kicking myself for being so _arrogant_ as to think I could handle all of that on my own.

"My brother had gotten wound up in the middle of that, and the stone was then bound to his soul in the armor. I didn't want to risk using it, but Dante- the woman controlling Fuhrer Bradley- came after us and captured him, and had one of her pawns kill me. She tried to use the stone to transfer her soul to a new body before the one she was already in died due to her soul being too weak to keep it alive, but Al wouldn't stand for that." He said, shaking his head, with a vague smile that held no happiness. "He used it to revive me, as my soul was still at the gate. He sacrificed himself in the process."

"So you actually died and came back to life?"

"...In a sense, yeah. My heart had stopped, and I wasn't breathing, but it was just soon enough that he could still heal the wound that killed me and bring my soul back." He snorted, with a slightly crazed smile. "And then I turn right around and sacrifice myself to bring him back, expecting to die in the process, but get thrown over into this world instead."

Remus frowned, and then pinched the bridge of his nose as if he was having trouble keeping up. "Wait. So... this was when you were, what, sixteen?"

"About. I'm not done yet."

"...Okay..." He said, and Ed could clearly tell that it was information overload for him. It was a lot to take in; a lot had happened in his twenty-one years of life.

"So. My father was already on this side of the gate, but that's another story and I can tell you're not gonna be able to take much more of my babbling." He said, with a slight chuckle. "I stayed with him for a while, in London, actually, and then we moved to Munich. I went off to study rocketry, because I thought for some convoluted reason it could get me home somehow, and that backfired. Long story short-"

"Far, far too late, Edward." Remus said, rubbing his temples.

"...Uh. Well. I'll keep it short from here. Two years after I sacrificed myself to save my brother, a secret cult named the Thule Society sought me out because they wanted to get to my world for some reason or other. Some said for weapons, some because they thought it was Shangri-La, or Shamballa or whatever. Anyway, they used me to open the gate, and then changed their minds _again_ and decided it had to be destroyed. I met up with my brother, and the two of us and Mustang stopped them, and we destroyed the gate with us on this side, and him on the other. Dad was injured, but he stayed with us until everything was over, and then we moved to New York."

Remus' head shot up. "Hold it. Back up. You destroyed what?"

"The gate. The portal that bound my world and yours."

"So you're basically stranded here, then."

"Basically, yes. I miss a lot of the people I used to know over there, but it's not all bad. I still have my brother and dad. If making some personal sacrifices will keep one world from trying to destroy the other, I'll do it. So I did, and here we are." He said, with a shrug. "This is home now."

Remus stared at him as if he'd never seen anything quite like him before. "...My god. That's…"

"Horrific? Depressing? Bloody? Take your pick. I've got more."

Remus balked openly. "How can you make_ fun_ of that?"

Ed shrugged. "Desensitized, probably."

Remus floundered for a moment. "...I'm sorry, but I just cant process all of that."

"It's okay. It's a lot to take in. Give it a week."

Remus snorted. "Easy for you to say."

Ed shrugged. "Hey, you asked, I told you."

They sat in companionable silence- or in Ed's case, laid- for maybe fifteen minutes before Remus started and asked Ed what time it was. He pulled his silver watch out of his pocket, and they both studied it for a moment, then set off running toward the village to make it back on time.

After shepherding the kids back to the school, Ed parted ways with Remus at the second floor corridor, where Remus would have to ascend another flight of stairs, and Ed weave through the hallways to his room. He knew he'd left out some details in his explanation to Remus, but, well... some things were just a little too personal to divulge to a person he'd only known for a few months. Like the real consequences of trying to revive a human, and the 'creatures' that had been under Dante's thumb. He'd stood back and evaluated it like an objective observer, and forced himself to be dispassionate. And quite frankly, Remus didn't need to know about his own minor idiosyncracies. It wasn't like the ghosts of his past would come back to haunt him. They were dead, and that was it.

With that thought, he closed the door to his quarters and set about preparing for his next class.

* * *

Through owl communication with his family, Ed, Al, and Hohenheim had agreed to move to London over the Christmas break to make the commute easier on Ed, as it appeared this would be more than a short-term thing. And, as a result, they had already found a flat in the southern area, and sent their boxes ahead, and Ed would be waiting for them at Kings Cross after they got off their flight. He had a feeling Al wouldn't be in the best shape seeing how the kid paled at the thought of being that high in the sky in a glorified metal box.

Molly and Arthur had come to meet Percy, Ginny and the twins (apparently Ron stayed at the school with Harry over Christmas), and insisted on waiting for Ed's family with him. Not that he minded the company, but it was a little weird. A tiny voice in the back of his head told him that Arthur had begged his wife to let him stay so he could interrogate them about the plane trip.

After a fair amount of time, he saw Al and Hohenheim disembarking from a local passenger train nearby, and waved both arms to catch their attention. Al noticed him first, and nudged Hohenheim in the same direction. Al ran toward Ed and nearly tackled him, laughing when Ed spun him around. He made an indignant noise when Ed tousled his hair affectionately.

"Quit messing with my hair, dammit!"

"Ah, shaddap…" He snickered. His smile faltered, however, when he saw his dad holding a leash, and at the other end was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, wagging its tail so enthusiastically it almost lost balance on its hindquarters. Al laughed sheepishly when he saw the look on Ed's face, smiling apologetically.

"Isn't that the stray that lurked around the house in Brooklyn?"

"Well, yeah, I didn't want to leave her, Rosie really likes you…"

"You _named_ it?"

"Her, Ed. It's a girl."

"Whatever. Jeez. I'm only gone for three months…"

Al chuckled again, spotting the Weasleys coming toward them. "Friends, Ed?"

Ed spun around. "Oh! Yeah, Al, Dad, these two are Molly and Arthur Weasley. They're the parents of a student of mine. And they kept me from getting lost my first day here."

"Well." Al said, shaking Molly's hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Weasley. And I'm glad to meet another person who can put up with him. We can exchange notes."

"Hey!" Edward snapped.

"Oh, thank you, dear, call me Molly. And your brother is actually quite charming."

Ed stuck his tongue out at Al. "Well… you must not know him very well." They laughed. Ed didn't.

"Al, you're mean."

"Shut up."

Somewhere in the greetings, Ed had ended up holding Rosie's leash while Hohenheim introduced himself. Ed felt suspiciously like a schoolkid going through the mandatory meet-the-friend's-parents trial, and decided to distance himself a bit while they laughed at his expense.

As a result of holding Rosie's leash, she was now up on her hind legs, scratching at him to pick her up. He sighed, bending down to do so, wincing when his leg gave a painful throb. He stood again with some difficulty, balancing a fourteen pound ball of squirming dog-fluff in his arms, which commenced with slathering his face relentlessly.

Rosie slowly moved her attack zone away from the vicinity of his eyes, and he wiped the drool off to look at Al, in a 'see-what-you've-done' fashion, but found Al already staring at him with an expression of mixed anger and concern.

"What?"

"You hurt your leg."

"No I didn't."

"Don't lie to me, I saw you grimace as you tried to stand! You can never come back from anything unscathed, can you?"

"Al…"

"Ed, would it kill you to keep your body in good repair? You've-"

"Only got one life, I know, I know…WEAUGH!"

During the sibling banter, Rosie had continued licking Ed's face, and opening his mouth in making the 'oh' sound was a mistake, as it exposed that particular area to attacks. Needless to say, Al couldn't help but laugh at his brother as he spat obsessively.

"Stop laughing, you sadist."

"Ahah…eh- okay. All is forgiven. Just please, be more careful."

"Brat."

"Lying jerk." They shared a brief standoff, on the tail-end of which, Al's face paled to a kind of grayish-green pallor. Ed perked up when he closed his eyes and groaned.

"Hey, you okay? You look like you're gonna be sick." Al shook his head, taking a few deep breaths

"Oh… I think the airsickness is catching up with me…thanks for getting me riled up. I'm sure that helped. " He dropped his head to Ed's shoulder piteously. Ed stroked his hair soothingly.

"It's not fair. I get seasick and you get airsick."

Hohenheim walked over, having bid the Weasleys goodbye, and set a concerned hand on Al's shoulder. "He alright?"

"Feeling a little sick. I think we should head to the flat."

They maneuvered through the crowds inside the station to the roads outside, and hailed a cab instead of walking, for Al's sake.

* * *

Al was fast asleep by the time the cab reached their building (which didn't take long at all) and had to be steered up the one flight of stairs by his big brother- who had a chance to behave like one for once- after a quite awake Hohenheim to their new apartment.

Ed yawned noisily as he stepped through the door, opening his eyes blearily to take the place in. Just inside the front door was a small sitting room to the left (filled with boxes), and farther down the hallway was a door to the kitchen on the right. Down the hallway was a bathroom, and two bedrooms, one to the left and one at the dead end of the hall.

He also noticed that the paint was peeling in the corners, the floor creaked, and the light fixture in the sitting room ceiling probably hadn't been dusted for about a millennium. "Lovely spot. Was this place built in the 16th century?"

Hohenheim, either not catching the sarcasm or ignoring it, responded. "This is one of the complexes built right after the Great War- er, World War One, rather. And it suffered a bit of mistreatment during the economic depression, but it's the best we can do for now."

Sometime since they walked in the door, Al had collapsed on the one lone piece of furniture in the room, a white futon couch, apparently left for them by the previous tenant. He eyed his little brother with concern before sighing and sitting down in front of it, meaning to pull over a random box and start unpacking, but Rosie promptly crawled into his lap and curled up contentedly. He growled. She whined and shoved her nose into his stomach. With a sigh, he reclined his head onto Al's legs, defeated. Defeated by a toy dog.

Eyes closed, he lapsed into daydreams. He had a lot to digest, mentally speaking, considering Remus and the current threat of Black showing up in the school again. On that same train of thought, there was one (living) person out in the world who knew his whole story. The thought worried him on a very basic, impersonal level, but he knew Remus wouldn't sell him out. The man was kind, and easy to get close to if you looked past his, as James Potter had called it, 'furry little problem'. There wasn't much in Remus' life to laugh at, but that was one of the few things that could be amusing. They had a few times to meet up and chat, mostly about current events, particulars of their lives, or just plain nothing over the month and a half since the Hogsmeade trip. As a result, Ed felt close to the man, in an almost brotherly way, but still tried to keep himself distanced a bit. He didn't want Remus to end up like Alfons.

This morbid thought was punctuated by another yawn, stinging eyes fluttered shut as he stretched languidly on the floor. He heard heavy footsteps crossing the room, and a muted clink of a mug on old wood. Blearily, he opened his eyes to see Hohenheim smiling almost warmly at him, crouched near Al's head. "Made you some tea. There's a mattress in one of the bedrooms if you want to go lay down. You look whipped."

Ed squeezed his eyes shut and blinked them rapidly, trying to stymie the impending demand for rest. "What about you? There's only two places to sleep."

"Naah, I'm not tired. Jet lag. You go ahead."

Despite the fact that Ed knew his father was lying (Flying east made you go backwards, not forward, and it was well after dark in New York), his exhaustion got the better of him. He stood with the goal of not falling on his face foremost in his mind, and carefully picked up the chipped blue mug and muttered a near-incoherent goodnight to Hohenheim.

Settling onto the spring mattress, he unfolded the carefully set quilt at the foot of the bed (probably the building manager's doing, as a welcome) and slithered under it with a contented shiver. Before he could make himself comfortable, Rosie scuttled up to the bottom of the pillow and snuggled up right under his nose. She licked it, settling her head at near eye-level with him, giving him a plaintive whine.

He sighed melodramatically, worming one arm out from under the covers to stroke her head. He stared at her for a fleeting moment before his eyes closed in what he thought was a blink, but didn't open back up.


	6. Chapter 5: Bitter Pill

Hey, look, I actually named the story. XD (Though it may not be permanent, it looks better than 'Untitled').

Bit shorter this time. Had some writer's block, which is why this took a couple of months... listening to the 5th movie's soundtrack on loop helped a bit.

* * *

After his mandatory dosage of domesticity a la Housewife-Alphonse ("First a mother, now a housewife. I may as well just get a sex change and be done with it.", he groused.), Edward headed back to the illness petri-dish commonly referred to as school. It was like reliving his first month in this world all over again. He woke up every morning with a sore throat, and seemed to sneeze periodically for no good reason throughout the day. Especially on rainy days. And Hogwarts got quite a few of those, though thankfully not as much as London. His automail joints were grateful for that.

Things were getting subtly more tense around campus. The prolonged time which Black was on the run was making every sane witch and wizard nervous to the point of frustration. All it took sometimes was a tiny little accidental nudge, perhaps a poorly delivered offhand comment, or a friendly jab that went a little too deep, to push one over the edge and start a fight.

That scenario was becoming more and more inevitable in Ed's mind every time he was forced to mingle with Snape. Ed had already gotten the full story from Remus, and was getting quite peeved at Snape for his catty remarks and holier-than-thou attitude. Now that Ed knew his past, however, he diagnosed the prickishness to be an old grudge he was nursing from his schooldays. Probably more to it than met the eye, but still. Childish much?

However, as he walked back to his quarters, after dinner, Ed was deeply embroiled in thoughts of his family, specifically, his brother. Al had been drifting, working for temp agencies, much like Ed had, since their unceremonial arrival, after getting a GED along with his brother and whilst working toward an Associate degree in Science to help him find a better, more fulfilling job. And, perhaps it was Ed's sudden steady job, or other factors, but Al's resolve was now cemented. He wanted to become a doctor. Of course, Ed supported his brother all the way, encouraging him to make his own decisions and suchlike, but... truth be told, med school was expensive, and even though he'd completed a lot of the prerequisites in community college, it would still cost nearly eighty thousand dollars for a decent education, and Edward paled to think how much the equivalent was in Britain.

His mind was swimming with questions of that nature. So many, in fact, he ran smack into his classroom door. He stayed still for a moment, then sighed defeatedly, standing back and rubbing his injured forehead.

"Damn." He muttered, to the world in general. He pushed open the door lazily, completely missing the fact that there was another being in the room. A familiar one, in fact.

"Something on your mind, shorty?"

"GAH!" He jumped sideways when he heard the voice, and it didn't help matters that he was cutting through the desks when he did so. He suddenly found himself on his back, in a quite uncomfortable position, having tripped backwards over a chair, on top of which the backs of his legs were resting.

Remus leaned carefully over him, face twitching in an attempt to keep from laughing. "...Anything hurt?"

Ed righted himself slowly, checking for bruises. "Just my pride. And what were you doing lurking around my room, anyway?"

"I was hand delivering a letter. Didn't look like your owl, nor any school bird. Seems it got a tad lost."

Ed sighed, accepting the presented letter. "Stupid owls. Even my own doesn't like me." He looked at the handwriting curiously. It wasn't any script he recognized. Al's lettering was much smaller than this, nearly illegible if one wasn't familiar with it. He opened the letter anyway, which was a mistake. As soon as the wax seal unstuck, small, white-hot bursts of flame, like tiny firecrackers spilled out, covering his hands and forearms. They seared his arms, leaving black spots on his automail, and angry red welts on his left arm.

"Hold still!" Remus pulled his wand quickly from his coat, casting a silent spell which banished the firecrackers, and they disappeared into thin air.

"Damn..." Ed grimaced in pain, pulling his sleeve up to better see his injured arm. There were red spots all over, which would inevitably blister if not treated. Remus gently held his arm steady, murmuring spells to help expedite the healing process. "Remus, what the hell was that?"

"I believe_ that_ was hate mail. Or do you have any friends with a bad sense of humor?"

Ed scowled. "Hate mail? I haven't even _done_ anything yet and people already hate me?"

Remus gave him a sympathetic look. "You have to remember, Ed, you are not a wizard. There are people who think they are above muggles, like they're greater beings. Some are so radical to resort to things like this."

Ed sighed, feeling anger heating his face. "Yeah, well, if I ever see one of these bastards, I'll return the favor." He couldn't help feeling like this was a form of racism, like he was percieved to be a 'lesser being' just because his blood wasn't pure.

Remus smiled slightly. "With your temper, I don't doubt that for a moment. And, speaking from experience, I'd advise you to exercise more caution when opening your mail."

Ed rubbed his arm gently. "I'll do that."

Remus then situated himself on a desk, crossing his legs. "So. Why did you run into the door? "

Ed looked up surprisedly, laughing at himself quietly, slightly embarrassed that Remus had noticed that. "Oh, no reason. I've just got a lot on my mind." He shrugged. " We're operating on a pretty tight budget at the moment, and my little brother wants to start toward a Master's degree. He's already got an Associate's."

"Good for him." Remus smiled. "I, er... do have another reason for coming here, though. I've heard gossip that Black was muttering something about Hogwarts in his sleep when he was still in prison. I'm worried he may be after Harry."

Edward straightened. "Damn. That's not good. But, uh... what do you want me to do about it?"

"I've been talking with the headmaster recently- and he agrees- that we should keep a closer watch on Harry. He also received a brand new Firebolt- that's a broom, by the way, his old one was destroyed- on Christmas, and it's been confiscated to make sure it's not cursed. He doesn't know who it's from."

Edward nodded, bidding him to continue.

"But this is my point: Perhaps you could sit in on Gryffindor's Quidditch practice tomorrow? I was giving Harry lessons on how to make a Patronus earlier tonight, and he mentioned that he wasn't allowed to go because the staff feels he'd be too easy a target, and Madam Hooch is ill. I thought that, perhaps with another staff member present, he might be allowed to participate."

Ed nodded. "Yeah, okay. Just tell him to come here right before practice tomorrow, and I'll go down to the pitch with him."

"Excellent, thank you. I'd do it myself, but it's coming up on another full moon, and I might not be alert enough to keep a proper eye on him. I just don't want him to miss out on being a kid while he can still enjoy it."

Edward nodded. "Believe me, I understand. I'll be there."

* * *

Pencilling in the last test score, Edward flopped back in his chair bonelessly, stretching his back muscles.

The students were advancing remarkably quickly, for such young beginners. He was ahead of the lesson plan's schedule by weeks, even beginning to give them condensed lessons on chemistry, which was their only hang-up. Most had attended primary school prior to beginning at Hogwarts, however, it was difficult for them to call on such old memories.

"Professor?"

It was Potter, decked out in his Quidditch robes, poking his head in the door. "Um... Professor Lupin told me to come here before practice."

Ed sat up straight. "Right, yeah. I'm coming." He pulled his coat quickly from the back of his chair, slinging it over his shoulder and walking out the door with Harry.

"I thought Madam Hooch was going to sit in?" Harry asked curiously.

"Hey, teachers have lives too, you know." Potter seemed to look slightly ashamed for a moment. Ed sighed. "Look, kid, I don't think you need an escort either, but it's not my place to decide."

Potter looked up surprisedly, with a tinge of relief. "I'm glad _someone _agrees with me."

"They're only doing what they think is right. My advice is to just put up with it 'til they stop... or give them the slip."

"...Wait. You're a teacher, and you're encouraging me to misbehave?"

Ed grinned mischievously. "I speak from experience."

Upon reaching the pitch, Edward and Harry parted ways, the former climbing into the stands and taking a seat, as the latter retrieved his broom from a redhead Ed couldn't quite identify from this distance- probably Weasley- and took to the air with his team.

Edward had only witnessed one game before, but he still stared in awe at the Firebolt. The last time he watched anyone flying around on a broomstick, it was in high winds and rain, neither of which gave him a good view. Now, however, in the fading evening light, he got to see everything. He'd never seen a person move quite that fast, broomstick or no. Even though he could hardly keep up, he could tell Potter was talented. His swoops and dives incited cheers from his teammates, which only grew in volume when he caught the snitch effortlessly, twice in the span of five minutes.

He only remembered that his job was to watch for anything that might hurt the kid after they took their first break. He scrutinized the stands and field, only to find... nothing. He was beginning to think the teachers were being unrightfully paranoid. There hadn't been any sightings of Black anywhere near the school, nor anywhere else in the country. Either he was very good at hiding himself, or he was dead.

He sighed, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it with a match. Al constantly told him how nasty it was, but he felt he needed it. He hadn't smoked in a long while, and tended to only turn to the stuff when he was stressed. He blew the smoke out through his nose irritably. If there was any way, magical or otherwise, to trace mail, he was going to find out how. He was still fuming over the letter he received last night. He gingerly pulled up his left sleeve to check on the burns.

Despite Remus' best efforts, they had begun to blister, and holy freaking_ hell_ they hurt. He was forced to wear long sleeves even on the hottest of days due to his other arm, and the cotton of his shirtsleeve constantly rubbing the welts made it feel like tiny little needles were being stabbed into his skin.

"What happened there?"

He looked up at the new voice, which came from Weasley, having finally come up from the pitch to sit down. He was focused on Ed's arm. "Nah, that's nothing." He spoke around the cigarette. "Just a freak accident."

Weasley nodded in understanding. Now that the surprise wore off, he adopted a more melancholic attitude, plopping down on the bench nest to Ed, watching the team practice dolefully. They sat in a slightly awkward silence for a stretch, Ed beginning to squirm under the wave sheer misery the boy seemed to be radiating. Obviously, something had happened, as Ed noticed that a certain someone was absent. "Hey, where's that girl you two always hang out with?"

He noted, with a bit of surprise, that Weasley began to grow a bit angry. Ed grinned. Hit the nail right on the head, didn't I. "All right, what happened?"

Weasley sighed. "You know that stupid cat she has?"

"You mean the fat orange one that attacked me? Kind of hard to forget."

"Yeah, well, I told her to keep that beast away from my rat, but she didn't. The thing ate him last night."

Ed lowered an eyebrow. "Yeah... cats do that. And, if you ask me, that rat of yours looked like it was on it's way out anyway. All fur and bones."

"That was from stress! Would you be able to relax with a giant, vicious carnivore dying to eat you?"

"...Probably not." His mind involuntarily flashed back to the memory of a certain homonculus.

He gazed out over the stadium again, eyeing the stands on the opposite side. The sun was nearly halfway beneath the horizon now, casting shadowy rays of light past the clouds, and dying the sky all manner of bright, saturated colors.

Ed's eyes flicked back to the stands suddenly when one of the shadows moved. He straightened up quickly, focusing on the third row from the top curiously. It appeared, though, that there was nothing there._ ...The hell? _He sighed tiredly, rubbing his right temple. _Great_. He was so tired now that his eyes were playing tricks on him.

* * *

Later that night, after separating from Harry and Ron at the entrance to the castle, Ed reluctantly proceeded to Dumbledore's office. He considered telling the older man about the shadow he'd seen, but he was fairly convinced it had just been a trick of the mind.

No, this visit had a more serious purpose, regarding the Stone and the circumstances of it's creation. Through some well-placed questions, and a few trips to the restricted section, he'd found that the stone did, in fact, exist at one point or another. He'd also read that Flamel himself was over 660 years old. Knowing this, Edward was almost completely certain that Dumbledore had been privy to the secret, though he did harbor a small bit of hopeful doubt.

He stopped in front of the Gargoyle, trying to recall the password. He regarded it dubiously.

"...Twizzler?"

"..."

"Lemon drop."

"..."

"Dammit."

Unsruprisingly, his last guess was not, in fact, the proper password. He never really had a weak spot for sweets, so he only knew the names of a few he'd seen emblazoned on billboards in New York City. Damn the old man for his bizarre habits. He sighed irritably.

"How about this: You get out of my way, or I'll just transmute you to dust and force my way through."

He didn't expect a reaction to this, as he was talking to a statue. But, lo and behold, the creature hopped to the side, and Edward fancied he saw a bit of worry one it's serpentine face.

"Uh... thanks?" Carefully, he sidled onto the staircase.

He prepared to knock at the door, but it swung slowly open to admit him, it's occupant seated at his desk as though he'd been waiting for Ed. "You wish to speak with me, Edward?"

"Yeah, I've got a few questions for you." Edward strode confidently up the few steps to the main office area, standing in front of the desk. He noted, warily, that there was a line of paintings along the upper part of the wall with older people in them, and plaques beneath that hailed each as a former headmaster. Most appeared to be asleep.

"I got a letter from Nicolas Flamel." He said in apparent nonchalance.

"Yes, Nicolas asked me to forward that letter to you when I informed him of your appointment."

Ed raised an eyebrow. "So you two are friends, then."

"In a manner of speaking. We worked together for a time and gained a sort of companionship."

Edwards expression became ever-so-slightly colder. "Then you know about the Philosopher's Stone.

"I do."

The tone of Dumbleodore's voice made his fist clench in his pocket. His teeth ground. "It takes human sacrifice on a genocidal scale to create one of those. I was under the impression that you wouldn't condone that. I guess I was wrong."

At this, Dumbledore furrowed his brow in not anger, but confusion. "Human sacrifice? I do not believe that Nicolas ever-"

Ed's composure snapped under a surge of anger. "Don't play dumb with me, old man! I saw it happen. I _know_ what it takes to create something that powerful! I saw an _entire city_ disappear in a flash of light, killing thousands of soldiers, just for_ that_ damned thing!"

Dumbledore remained silent for a moment after Edward's outburst. "I can see now why you would be upset by this news, but please, allow me to explain. That may be what one is required to do to create a stone through alchemy, but it is not the same when concerning magic. The stones may share the same name, but they come to be through two very different paths. I have known Nicolas for many years, and I also worked on the stone with him. Nothing we did to create it required any sort of blood sacrifice, I assure you."

Edward's hands began to calm their enraged shaking, taking the new information into account. "No one was hurt?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "Not a single person. You may ask Nicolas if you do not believe me."

"No...no." He said, calming slowly. "I do, it's just..." Ed sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, breathing deeply to calm himself. "... The stone was the source of a lot of pain and trouble not only for me, but my entire country. It hit a bit of a sore spot when I read Flamel's letter. I'm sorry."

Dumbledore nodded sagely. "I understand."

"And I thank _you_ not to disrespect a wizard like that, muggle."

Edward jumped at the voice, whipping his head around. One of the paintings was eyeing him with disgust, and the plaque beneath him read 'Phineas Nigellus Black'.

Edward scoffed at him. "Sorry, I don't remember inviting you to this conversation. Besides, I'd like to see what you'd do about it from inside a painting, _Phin_'."

"Phineas, please do not bring your personal politics into a private conversation." Dumbledore admonished.

Phineas was still having a staring contest with Edward, which the latter ultimately won. Phineas scoffed and stood from his chair, striding out of his frame. Dumbledore sighed. "I apologize for that. The majority of the Black family is not terribly kind toward muggles."

"Hn." Edward turned away from the empty frame. This week was prime for all sorts of crap, it seemed.

"Sorry about all this." Ed turned to leave, sheepishly.

Dumbledore shook his head. "And Edward?"

"Yes?"

"The password is 'licorice snap', for future reference. Please refrain from threatening my gargoyles." He angled his head downward a bit, eyeing Edward over his glasses, with a glint of amusement in his eyes.

"Uh... yeah. Heh. Sorry." He snickered.

Dumbledore chuckled. "Goodnight, Edward."

Ed smiled wanly in return. "'Night, Professor."


	7. Chapter 6: Pureblood

First and foremost, let me say I AM SO EFFING SORRY. I know I haven't updated this story since, like, August, but there was a lot of funeral-type stuff to deal with this past month and a half, and pre-holiday stuff, and job searching, and- ugh. It's just been one big mess, really. I make it a general rule to keep my stories in the vicinity of about 4000 words per chapter (is that too long?), and I just accomplished that this evening. Or morning, whatever.

You know what the sad part is? I have almost 1/3 of the story finished. But it's the last third, and bits and pieces of an epilogue, which may end up as a sequel if it gets much longer. -_-U

Bad chapter title is BAD. D: Ideasplz?

Anyway. Here's the story. I'll shut up.

* * *

-

"Checkmate."

The voice held a smug sort of satisfaction as it's knight promptly beheaded the loser's King. The loser frowned.

"Don't take too much pride in that. I can't play chess worth a shit."

"Excuses, excuses."

Ed sighed in mock melodrama, plucking the tiny head from the board and reattaching it with Alchemy. The king sketched a deep bow, as thank you. Ed grinned, watching it and it's pearly white compatriots retreat to their respective places.

"Looks like they want another go."

Ed glared balefully. "You just wanna kick my ass again. Admit it."

Remus held his hands up. "You got me. It's nice to have something I'm good at."

It was late in the morning of February eighth, a Tuesday. The banter was nice, Ed acquiesced, but he knew that both Remus' mind and his own were somewhere else.

Black had broken into the school again the two nights ago, and was seen standing over Weasley with a knife. In the very same room as his quarry, Harry Potter.

The thought of what could have happened bothered Edward greatly. It bothered Remus even more.

In the face of the worry and fear, Edward still found himself amused at something that had happened the previous Saturday, at the Gryffindor/ Ravenclaw match. He hadn't attended the match, having been too preoccupied with grading papers and readjusting the lesson plan (it baffled him how quickly the students were advancing, he would have to talk to Flamel about it come June). From what he heard, however, it was a performance he would regret missing, between Lee Jordan's less-than-bipartisan commentating, and the sight of three students tripping over their long black dementor-esque robes in an attempt to avoid a very impressive, very angry stag patronus produced by one Gryffindor Seeker. Ed could easily hear the pride in Remus' voice.

Despite the fact that he was not a wizard, the entire prospect of 'magic' interested him. Every few days, he would find himself lounging in a remote corner of the library, flipping through supplementary spellbooks, trying to decode the exact meaning of the latin words behind them for fun, geek that he was. _Bored person_ that he was.

What intrigued him more was that both his world and this one spoke the same language, albeit with different accents (he was slowly losing his) and slang. Most of the words held the same meaning, only differing in the cases of connotation and sometimes regional dialects. Perhaps he was living in an alternate dimension, or a 'mirror world'. Dimensional theorist he was not.

He jumped when he heard a screech from the other side of the courtyard, and a large, grumpy-looking fish owl swooped down on the low wall he sat on and landed nimbly next to his arm. The chesspieces dove behind a nearby stack of books.

Milagro, with a displeased flick of his wings, dropped a white envelope in Ed's lap. It was only after endless cajoling and bribing with treats that Ed finally managed to get Milagro to act anything like a domesticated animal.

He reached into his pocket, drawing out a treat, and, with his right hand for good measure, proffered it to the owl as a reward. Milagro gracelessly plucked it from his fingers, not wasting a moment in turning around, spreading his large wings, and setting off to the owlery. It was an improvement that the bird didn't accidentally-on-purpose nip his fingers anymore.

"Who's it from?" Remus asked curiously.

Ed's lip curled endearingly as he studied the small letters on the envelope. "It's Al's handwriting."

He peeled the letter open- they used the kind you had to lick, as they owned no wax stamps- and out fell a crisp, white, thrice-folded piece of looseleaf paper. He flipped it open and began to read.

_Hey!_

_How are things up there in Scotland? Warm, I hope, because I know how much you hate the cold. Rosie misses you. You should have heard her howling after you left. Holy. Freaking. Crap._

_Anyways. I've managed to get some grants, and I've applied for scholarships, so that's shrunk the final tab a bit. ISCM looks promising. If I get accepted, I can start working as a paid intern after my schooling, and then put my money toward school expenses and the surgical courses I want to take._

_Also, I want your opinion on something. Lately, food costs and such have been rising, and I've been thinking: If Alchemy really does catch on at the school, you'll need textbooks. Seeing how the Headmaster travelled some 4 thousand miles to track down an Alchemist talented enough to teach the subject (and don't take that as a compliment), I'd say that makes us the authority on Alchemy, right? Excepting Mr. Flamel, of course. We could write textbooks for the subject, get them published, and get supplemental income from the sales. What do you think? Dad's a bit skeptical._

_Please please PLEASE don't find a new way to beat yourself up. It gives me headaches worrying about you._

_Love,_

_Al_

Ed scowled at the last paragraph. How dare that little punk insinuate he went looking for fights?... Well, granted, sometimes he did, but not recently.

"Something wrong?" Remus peeked over the top of the letter curiously.

Ed shook his head, sighing. "Nah, Al's just being a brat, that's all. Says I go searching for trouble."

"Does he really?" Remus drawled. Edward glanced up and gave him a dagger-bearing stare, but he simply shrugged with a benign air.

All sibling cheap-shots aside, the bit about textbooks did interest him. It might not be lucrative, per se, but it would definitely help with expenses. Not to mention, make the teaching process easier on him. Rifling through six inches of papers looking for the right notes got old after a while. Not to mention frustrating. There was many an inkwell spilled in that classroom thanks to the stupid notes.

He shook himself, only to find that Remus had entertained himself with the newspaper when Ed was distracted by the letter. That was why he enjoyed Remus' company so much; the man was very laid back, had a roll-with-the-punches attitude when he wasn't freaking out over small things. Edward had only known him for a few months, but he could already tell Remus was a habitual worrier, so these moments were few and far between. Some small thing they had in common allowed them to get along like old friends, even if, Ed mused, there was a twelve year age difference.

The books behind which the chesspieces took refuge had been ignored up until this point, when Edward plucked the top one off and flipped open to a page that looked interesting. It wasn't any book from the Hogwarts library, rather one from a pawn shop in London that Ed had bought in his last visit there. Truth be told, he only bought it because it was in German, and it would keep him from going insane in the relative boredom at Hogwarts. Not that the school was without it's excitements, by a long shot, but it was the silence at night that ate away at his brain. It was a little known fact that Edward Elric was an insomniac, though the revelation should come as no surprise. He had spent more nights up and reading past the witching hour by the aid of a candlelight than he had sleeping like a normal person would.

The book, he soon found out, was a partial auto-/biography of Carl Jung, with a larger part written by a third party. It was an interesting read, being about a psychologist, but not exactly Ed's cup of tea. Not to mention, he wasn't expertly fluent in German, he only possessed working knowledge of the guttural language. It was a way to keep his tongue sharp, figuratively speaking.

Both of the teachers jumped when, out of nowhere, a young Gryffindor boy- hadn't Ed seen him in Remus' class?- tore right past them, holding a scarlet-hued letter at arms length as though it was going to spontaneously burst into flames.

Both stared after him wordlessly. Then abruptly cringed when the letter sprung from his hands and began screeching at him. Ed couldn't help it. He snickered quietly, shaking his head. The place got weirder every day.

"That poor boy. He must have been the one who left the passwords out."

"That letter seemed pretty pissed at him. What did he do?" Ed dog-eared his page, flipping the book shut.

"Minerva said that some Gryffindor boy left all the week's passwords on a paper, and Black got a hold of them somehow." Remus gazed across the courtyard as the letter actually did go into spontaneous combustion, a cloud of gray ashes fluttering to the ground. "That letter was from his grandmother, I'll bet."

"...Shouldn't his parents have a say in this, too?" Ed mused curiously.

"They're... how do I word this gently...um... not exactly in their right minds. They haven't been for years now." Remus got a far-off look in his eyes suddenly, the look Mustang or Hawkeye used to get when asked about Ishbal. "A death eater tortured them into insanity twelve years ago. Frank and Alice were very good friends of mine. I went to school with them."

It then hit him that Remus was, in fact, a veteran of war. He'd forgotten... no, he hadn't forgotten what Remus had told him life after school was like. Rather, the words really hadn't sunk in until now. He saw the man a tinge differently now, as a scarred person, and not just physically. He must have haunting memories of the battles fought against these people. What he also realized that he'd stuck his foot in his mouth.

"Um... sorry. I didn't realize they were friends of yours."

Remus shook his head, wearing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "No. It's been ages since. Not many people know they're still alive, outside of the old Order-" Remus stopped as soon as the word left his mouth. He suddenly took on an expression that meant he'd said too much. He sighed, and the exhale bordered on a self-depreciating laugh. "I just can't keep my mouth shut, can I."

Ed grinned. "Apparently not. I guess I'm just that easy to open up to. Care to tell me what this 'Order' is?"

Remus shrugged. "I've already said too much, so why not." He cast a quick, almost involuntary glance across the courtyard, comfortable with the three people at the other end. If they spoke in hushed tones, they wouldn't be overheard.

"The Order of the Phoenix was a small contingent of witches, wizards, and...well, whatever category I fall into... creatures, I suppose-" Ed clicked his tongue at the tone of the word- " that were gathered by Dumbledore to fight against Voldemort. We were mainly a secret society, operating separate from the government. Vigilantes, if you will. We pretty much stayed in the shadows, but there were a fair few instances where we fought alongside the Aurors against the Death Eaters. Most of them just thought us brave bystanders rather than an organization, and we were happy to keep it that way.

"It was a pretty short-lived stint, starting up in about... oh, 1976, I suppose, and disbanding after the incident in Godric's Hollow in 1981, but I digress. Frank and Alice Longbottom were Aurors, and damn talented ones at that. They were invaluable comrades, and loyal friends. After Voldemort disappeared, for some reason, a group of three death eaters went after them, god knows why. Perhaps it was revenge they were seeking, but they attacked and tortured them, and before they could get to the couple's son, they were arrested. One of them, Bellatrix, did most of the work, and proudly admitted to torturing them, the bitch." He spat the last word with venom, glaring at the tree across the courtyard.

He sighed, scratching his head. "So, that's the long and short of it, and they've been in a mental hospital ever since. I tried to visit a few times, but... they wouldn't let me in. I'm too _dangerous_, they said."

Ed sat back and digested the information for a bit. "...Whatever happened to the Death Eaters?"

"They were sentenced to life in Azkaban, though I think one of them died... Bellatrix LeStrange and her husband Rodolphus are still alive, though. You ask me, they should have been sentenced to what they subjected Frank and Alice to. It's only fair."

Ed was a bit taken aback by this new, vindictive side of Remus. It was mildly frightening.

"I'd like to have them see just what they put other people through... but that's not the only reason. It worries me that they could escape like Sirius did." He sighed again, contemplating whether he should continue or not. "See... if Sirius really was a death eater, that would make him their comrade... but he's also Bellatrix's cousin."

He floundered for a moment, surprised. "...You forgot to mention that before. That's _bad_. How do we know he's not gonna go back and help them break out?"

Remus sighed, guiltily. "I know, but... I didn't think it was important, because, well... he hated all but a select few of his family so I thought maybe..." He scratched the back of his head sheepishly.

Ed leaned back against the pillar, chewing on his lip thoughtfully. "Black's been in the school twice now. Is this really the safest place for Harry to be? For anybody who gets in Black's way?"

Remus, gazed at the willow tree across the courtyard, watching the thin, vine-like tendrils wave in the chill breeze. "...Hard to say, now. I'd like to say yes, but... it's obvious that's not true."

Ed, in a force of habit, began flipping his watch open and closed. It was a nervous habit of his, whenever he was stressed or worried with no way to remedy it, he had to do something with his hands. Absently, he read the time on the watch face, and sighed.

He snapped is shut with a sharp click. "I should probably go write Al back. See ya." He hopped from the wall, giving his companion a wave and a small grin as he started off to his quarters.

* * *

Surprisingly, it wasn't at all difficult for him to find his way around, now. The room he stayed in was set pretty far away from the noise of the main halls, but the hallways were straightforward and easy to navigate, at the very least.

What he liked best about his room was the view. Out of the left side of the classroom's enormous cathedral windows, he got a view of the lake at the bottom of the hill the castle was settled on, with the mountains of the Scottish countryside beyond it, like blue misty shadows. It made for quite a few pretty sunsets, especially in the early spring, when the clouds carrying snow would drift away on the wind.

Shivering a little, he hurried up the steps to his office, then made a beeline for the fireplace, crouching down in front of the already burning wood and warming himself up. He then sighed, realizing that his quill and paper were sitting on his desk, up the stairs, and a considerable distance away from the fireplace. Oh, what he wouldn't give to be a wizard right now. It was a lazy reason, but still. Cold was cold.

Grumbling, he shot to his feet, running up the steps and snatching his ink, quill, and a piece of parchment from the table, then booking it back to his warm spot. He withdrew into his coat, sitting down on the hearthrug.

Shivering, he scribbled a quick reply.

_You little smartass. I'm gonna kick your ass you when I get back, mark my words._

_And yes, it's cold. For god's sake, it's almost spring. STOP SNOWING ALREADY. So yeah. My ass is freezing up here, though it was actually kinda nice today. The good thing is, I don't have to take a single step outside because my classroom is connected the main building. Gets kinda drafty, though._

_Aww, my baby brother's going to college! I'm so proud. _

_The book thing sounds like a good idea. Screw dad. Go for it. It'd be a lot easier on me, that's for damn sure._

_I should probably get up and start preparing for my next class right about now, but I don't want to leave my warm spot. I wish I had a space heater right about now. Or a heavier jacket. You know the temperature drops to, like, fifteen at night? And there's no central heating. Only fireplaces and blankets. Hope it's warmer where you are. Enjoy the perpetual rain._

_Love,_

_Ed._

He nibbled on the feathered tip of his quill, wondering if there was any way he could call Milagro to come to him, rather than going out in the cold again. Sighing and shaking his head, he surmised that a trip to the owlery was inevitable, he may as well get it over with.

* * *

"All right, that's all for today. Your homework is just to study your notes, and don't try to transmute anything. I don't want any of you getting hurt."

He slid the notes back into their folder, and the folder into it's drawer in his desk. He'd managed to shuffle them into some semblance of order over the past day, making the process of picking out the right pages easier.

Though Ed would bite his tongue off sooner than admit it, he actually didn't mind filling out paperwork. It warranted a short duration of peace, at the very least, even though his wrist felt like a limp noodle afterwards.

Of course, simply acknowledging the quiet brought it to an abrupt halt, as the door came open again, after the students had left, to admit Minerva McGonnagall.

"Edward, the headmaster needs to see you immediately. Come with me."

"Okay..." He stood from his desk a bit hurriedly, grabbing his coat and trotting out the door after her.

They proceeded to Dumbledore's office, where the two parted ways, and Edward continued in, to find another person in the room with the Headmaster. He was a tall, dark-skinned man, roughly thirty or forty years of age.

"Ah, Edward. This is Kingsley Shacklebolt."

"Hello." He said cautiously. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing dire. Kingsley, if you would like to explain?"

"Thank you, Headmaster." He nodded respectfully and turned to Edward. "I am to be your escort to the trial concerning Buckbeak the hippogriff, Mr. Elric. I've been sent by Amos Diggory to collect you."

"The Minister has requested you be present at the trial, and, if need be, voice your part of the story." Dumbledore elaborated.

Ed was silent for a moment. "The Minister? It can't be that big a deal, can it?"

"When the parent of the child injured is a school governor, it can." Dumbledore said from behind his desk, and Ed saw a bit of a glint in his eye. He was likely exhausted of the situation, as was everyone else involved.

Kingsley nodded. "I'd like to apologize for the lack of notice, but your presence wasn't requested until just yesterday. I wasn't informed myself until this morning. It shouldn't take too long, not more than a few hours."

After a quick change of clothing into the only suit he owned, Edward found himself in London- after a particularly unpleasant first experience in side-along apparition, though he'd kept his breakfast down- walking alongside Shacklebolt. He was a fairly nice person, if a bit unsocial.

"There should be a phonebooth somewhere up here... ah."

Shacklebolt directed him to a red phonebooth nestled next to a building on a backroad of London. He then set a hand on Ed's shoulder.

"Just go in there and dial 62442, and it will take you to the ministry."

"...I'm guessing this isn't your run-of-the-mill phone booth."

Shacklebolt shrugged. "It still works like a regular pay phone otherwise."

Shacklebolt, who seemed to be in a hurry, disapparated soon after that. Ed did as told, and waited after dialing the numbers, only to recieve quite a shock when the booth spoke to him.

"Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business."

Shocked, he stumbled into speech. "U-uhm... Edward Elric, and I'm here for a trial regarding a hippogriff..."

Seconds later, a small badge popped out of the coin slot, silver, with his name and 'criminal trial' carved into it in elegant print. He pinned it to his suitjacket as told, and scurried out of the lift once it brought him down to a large, cavernous Atrium. From there, he was nearly accosted by Security- apparently full-body searches were 'protocol'- and proceeded to the lifts, referring the paper Shacklebolt had given him, dictating the time and location of the trial.

The lift reached level four quickly, and though the small lift was crowded, Edward was the only one to get off, that is, unless the memos counted. They hovered around his head until each figured out it's own destination, and shot off like little paper rockets.

The courtroom was easy to find as well, having the day's docket pinned to the door. Ed snuck in the back, and slid into one of the seats next to Hagrid, who looked shocked to see him.

"Blimey- Wha're you doin' 'ere?"

"Backing you up. And you're welcome, by the way."

"I- well- oh. Uh... thanks."

"Don't mention it. So, uh... when is this thing due to start?"

"Shouldn't be too long, now. Can't say I like who's presidin', to tell you the truth."

"'Dolores Umbridge'?" Ed parroted from his paper. "Sounds like a crotchety old woman."

"Oh, she's crotchety, all right- bu' don't let her hear yeh say tha'. See, she's got a thing against any kind of 'half-breed'- Centaurs, half-goblins, like Flitwick- even doesn't like mixed-blood wizards. If she had her way, Remus wouldn't even be teachin', since he's a-" He cut off abruptly, at which point Ed cut in.

"Werewolf, I know." He muttered in an undertone. "He told me."

"Uh, righ'. Okay. Anyway, she's a nasty piece of work, long story short."

Ed sighed, looking toward the podium again. "I guess she'll have a problem with me, then, won't she."

"Muggle teachin' at Hogwarts? I'd be surprised if she didn't."

Ed snorted, a humorless, almost mischievous smile on his face. "Yeah, well, she can stow it. I really don't give a damn what she thinks."

To this, there was a snort from behind him. "I wouldn't be so cocky if I were you, Professor."

He turned, mildly bemused, to find Draco Malfoy standing behind him.

"Did you just_ sass_ me, Malfoy? Please tell me you're not that stupid."

He stood to emphasize his point. Malfoy shrunk back imperceptibly.

"Get in your seat, you little brat. And be glad you're not in my class."

Malfoy did so, retreating to sit beside two people who Ed could only guess were his parents, if the blonde hair and holier-than-thou expressions were any indication.

At that moment, a man who Ed supposed was the wizarding equivalent of a bailiff- probably an off-duty Auror- entered the room.

"All rise. Senior Undersecretary Dolores Umbridge presiding."

At that, the whole of the gallery and jury rose to their feet, as a short, toady-looking woman with tightly curled hair waddled into the room, dressed in long, black robes.

"You may be seated." She squeaked, in an awfully girly, honeyed voice. How nauseating.

Hands shoved in his pockets, Ed sat back down immediately, and the trial began.

In the end, the trial- fixed trial, Ed corrected himself- took no more than forty-five minutes, in which a skewed rendition of the incident was delivered by the youngest Malfoy, and Edward wasn't even acknowledged. It was like Umbridge would rather he not existed at all.

Hagrid did get his say, but it was picked at by the plaintiff's lawyer- probably the best money could buy- and the jury until it looked to have fallen apart. The jury ruled near- unanimous that Buckbeak was guilty, and consequently sentenced to death.

Hagrid was heartbroken. But the part that riled Ed the most was that, after all was said and done, and Hagrid had gone back to the school with Buckbeak- The Malfoys had the gall to gloat about it. And happily, too. It was being stuck in the lift listening to it that led Edward to butt in.

"Oh, and I'm sure today's ruling had nothing at all to do with the thousands of galleons you've 'donated' to the Ministry to forget about your criminal record, huh, Malfoy?" He snapped.

Malfoy's wife swelled with anger. "How dare you accuse Lucius of something so-so-"

"I think 'underhanded' or sneaky' would be the words you're looking for. Or, perhaps 'shameless' would fit, as well. All I'm saying is, it's awfully suspect."

"Perhaps you should consider the consequences of your words before saying them, Elric. Keep in mind, I do have the authority to have you sacked."

"Is that a threat, Malfoy?"

With this, Edward smiled devilishly, daring Malfoy to speak further. "It had better be. Anything less wouldn't cut it."

As soon as the lift opened to the atrium, Edward stepped out. "Have a nice day. And teach your son some manners, will you?"

And, with a friendly-but-not wave, he ascended the steps to the visitor's exit, tossing his badge in the bin as he went.

And a nagging voice in the back of his head told him that he had just made a very dangerous enemy.


	8. Chapter 7: Truth Be Told

HI! I finally have an update. It's only been what, a year? And a half? Oh god.

The blame lies solely with my old computer. The Saga Of The Broken Hard Drive continues- I can't run it. So I'm gonna try and contact somebody who can, and until then updates of any multi-chapter story begun before April 2009 will be sporadic at best. Because of the hard drive, school, and work. Yes, I found a job. :D

Just offering a warning so that the apparent time-jump in the chapter doesn't come like a slap to the face ;)

This entire year was written in a flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants manner, and only upon glancing back and reading over it did I realize that it was so short. T_T

As they say, hindsight is 20/20.

I promise, the next chapters will go into more detail in the year-round happenings. You can think of this as a 'pilot run' for Convergence, and the real story will kick into gear afterwards. :)

I had some serious writer's block with this beast, but somehow, I thought up a random sentence, which ended up being the first one, and the rest unfolded from there. Spooky. I'll try not to contradict any of my other chapters that will come later on down the line, but if I do, I'll have to edit. Sorry if I confuse. -_-;

And thus I shall end my overlong author notes and let you get to what you REALLY came here to read- the story.

* * *

Somehow or another, Ed always managed to wake up with his hair in his face.

He always had it down when he slept, and it should have been an expected happening considering how long it was and how often he moved around in his sleep (Al's complaints from their childhood about the bruises on his legs could attest to that). But hair in the mouth was never a pleasant taste, and it put him in a less-than-affable mood most mornings, adding to his already sour disposition owing to the fact that he was a night owl.

But this morning - whoops, sorry, _afternoon-_ he mused, whilst pulling saliva- dampened hair from his mouth, might be even worse.

Over the past nine months or so, Edward had become oddly comfortable in the school, despite all of the logic-defying happenings. His first impression of Dumbledore had been dubious at best, irritating at worst, and then rearranged itself into an agreeable -well, he wouldn't really call it cameraderie, but that was the gist of it anyway, as the year wore on. He'd come to be great friends with Remus, oddly enough, and somehow he'd become that one off-kilter friend everyone has that they haven't known very long, bet get along with like they were attached at the hip. Hagrid, being the towering, imposing man that he was, incited a bit of fear in Edward, likely because of his resemblance of a certain overbearing soldier- _Major, I can't breathe, please let go, you're cracking my SPINE_- but it soon became obvious that while the guy _was_ prone to anger at some times when it was called for, he was not without his own virtues. For example, his occupation: educating schoolchildren about the proper care and handling of animals, wild or domestic. Ed could recognize a passion when he saw one, Alchemy being his own, and that was clearly Hagrid's.

And therein lay the source of his problem.

Today was the day Buckbeak was to be executed. This was the primary instigator for Edward's dour mood on such a day with fluffy, unthreatening clouds in the sky, and a gentle breeze ruffling the trees. Most of the students were out on the grounds enjoying the weather in their afternoon break, some cramming in last-minute studying while only remembering to eat in sporadic little bursts, others just sprawled out on the grass soaking up the sunlight, likely not worried about their performance in the end-of-year tests.

He supposed that was why his class was so popular in the school- the fact that it was so new that there were no finals whatsoever. He hadn't had the time nor the inclination to organize such a thing, figuring that there was no real point, as his class wasn't one that would affect their final grades, and that it would only cause more unneeded stress to their already-overwrung nerves. Wasn't he nice?

But he digressed. Empathy toward animals was an Elric family trait, as much as he was loathe to admit it, and he was dead set on avoiding anything pertaining to Hagrid and Buckbeak today. Because if he had to see some musclebound, hooded figure hacking the poor beast's head off with an oversized axe, he was afraid he might actually cry.

Unfortunately, this also meant avoiding the trio of children that included the boy Remus had asked him to surreptitiously keep tabs on. This was where his two objectives clashed, and posed a terrible conundrum that he was now meditating over as he poked disinterestedly at his dinner, in a most un-Edward-like manner.

He didn't even have a companion to ask for his own opinion on the matter, and the reason hung low on the eastern horizon, still vaguely translucent this early in the evening. Remus was holed up in his quarters, aching down to the bone, and mentally preparing for his monthly involuntary transformation into a monster. Ed considered asking him for that funny little map that he'd confiscated from Potter that showed each and every person's location inside the school, but felt it would be a cop out. And he also worried for the boy's safety, regardless.

Sighing, he stood from the table, and wandered out of the Great Hall. He didn't trust himself to be stealthy- never a word one used to describe Edward Elric- but he knew those kids would probably be headed out to Hagrid's later on in the day, heedless of any warnings.

He decided skulking would be the best mode of action. That way, he would have the ability to spy from afar, and still not come into any real contact with them. The 'execution' was set for eight PM sharp, and a look at his pocketwatch told him it was quarter 'til. He wouldn't have much time to dawdle, but it still didn't stop him from taking the very..._very..._ scenic route.

* * *

It was just a little brisk, right on the cusp of evening as he set out for Hagrid's- at least, he hoped he was going in the right direction. He assumed it was somewhere near the paddocks he had conducted lessons in. His route forced him to use the tall, slightly wobbly breezeway that transversed a small valley that was almost a sheer cliffside between the knoll the school sat on and the hillside beyond. After that, he ducked into the woods to the side of the walkway, following what must have been a deer path- or, considering the location, maybe one for those winged horses. It was certainly well-worn enough.

The winding path stayed relatively close to the walkway, close enough that Ed could hear muffled speech from ahead. He quieted his footsteps, coming to a stop just inside the edge of the brush.

Hidden amongst the trees, he listened to the voices come closer, footsteps growing louder. He could hear a yelp from down the hill- Malfoy, there was no mistaking that simpering whiny voice- and Harry and Hermione jumped out of the passageway to crouch behind the wall, about twenty feet from where he stood.

Just as he was about to call out to them, Malfoy came running up to the passageway, Crabbe and Goyle on his heels, and threatened them that if they told anybody about what happened, he would make their lives miserable.

From his vantage point, Ed could see down the hill as well, and halfway down the slope stood something knew couldn't be possible- Harry, Hermione and Ron, the former two of which were... right... over there...

He blinked. And again. His eyes flitted between the two groups incredulously.

"What the hell is this?"

He didn't get a chance to meditate further on that subject, because mere moments later, both pairs of Harrys and Hermiones- and the lone Ron, what was up with _that_?- had all gone down hill, the closer pair a bit sneakier than the trio.

"This is not normal." Ed muttered, shaking his head as he jumped from the bushes and started back toward the school. True, he had been hit from all angles with the weirdest shit he'd ever known- yes, weirder than fake humans and bodyless souls- but there was something about doppelgangers that seemed wrong, even here. He tried to convince himself that the memory of a certain fake human wasn't making his stomach twist in pained worry.

* * *

"Remus...?" Ed called, edging into the office. The place was dark save for a few candles, clustered around the workspace on the messy desk. Remus was nowhere to be found, and a chalice of some smoking liquid sat on his desk. Ed could wager a guess that this was the Wolfsbane potion, if the smell was any indication.

Casting a glance out the window, he wondered why it was still full. It was twilight outside now; normally Remus was overly careful about taking the potion early enough that he wasn't caught by surprise. Something moved on the desk suddenly, and he circled around to see it.

In the dim, flickering light, there was the map of Hogwarts laid out, with little moving dots and names next to them. It was open to the section that covered the grounds outside of the castle, near the giant, violent willow tree that Ed had made a clear point of avoiding. There were two dots moving toward it, and he squinted to see the names, leaning closer. _Remus Lupin _was by the first, and the second, following him, was labeled _Severus Snape_.

He looked back at the willow, puzzled, and the two lines of text that constituted boundaries on the map- there were no hard-drawn lines to define walls, it was all some Latin script, most likely what made the map tick. Inside the passage were Harry and on the edge of the parchment were two more dots, and just as they were about to go off of the paper, Ed managed to catch one name, and pieces of another.

The full name was _Ronald Weasley. _The second name, only six letters of it, made Ed's blood run cold.

_Sir_

_Bla_

The potion was the least of his worries now. Hissing a fervent curse, Ed immediately bolted from the room, running so fast that the candles blew out in his wake.

* * *

He didn't stop when Aurora asked him what was wrong. He ran right past her, then leapt to the side to avoid a group of prefects chatting in the hall.

His first stop was his quarters, only ducking into his office long enough to snatch that damnable- _life-saving_- pistol from his desk, pop the magazine out, and back in while he ran for the outside. Swallowing back a wave of revulsion, he cocked it, but left the safety on.

His breath came fast in the late-spring air, burning in his lungs. The sun had sunken almost entirely behind the horizon, casting the school grounds into dusk. The pistol, now in his coat pocket, felt heavier than ever with the thought of having to fire it at another person. Target practice was innocuous enough, but a person...

He pushed his legs to go faster, hoping with all he had that he would get there in time. He had seen the map and knew where to go, only insofar as getting to the tree. And even if he did manage to get into the passage, what would he do? Remus was torn between protecting Harry and listening to Black, and therefore conflicted. It seemed even Remus himself didn't know what to do. Snape hated Remus, and probably Black too, and the kids as well. He was a loose cannon, there was no way to predict what he would do.

Such uncertainty was foreign to Ed, and it was not a feeling he liked. Even when staring down the threat of homunculi destroying humanity, he knew what to do. As it was, he was forced nose-to-nose with his first hurdle as he came to a skidding stop at the Willow.

Panting heavily, he tensed, realizing that he was within limb-striking range. Oddly enough, however, the tree was not lashing out at him; it was frozen and trembling, as if restrained by an unseen force. Cautiously, he let his eyes travel down to the base of the tree, searching- it had to be an underground passage, there was no other way... There!

A hole right at the base of the trunk, made by two bulky roots curving off to the side. Sending one last glance at the limbs of the tree, he started forward, only to nearly lose his head as a limb suddenly came crashing down.

He barely managed to recover from his knee-jerk leap to the side when another came swinging at him from the side, smashing right into his ribcage. Knocking the air clean out of him, the branch threw him through the air to land almost ten feet from where he was previously. He wheezed in a ragged breath, the dullness of the pain telling him that he had no broken ribs.

"Damn tree..." He coughed, clapping his hands together. The ground dropped underneath him, soil and grass moving up to solidify into a wall as another branch swung at him. He lunged out from behind it, darting for the hole.

Just as he dove headlong into the crevice, the tree sent a parting blow at him- that slammed right into his steel ankle. Ed smirked despite himself. _No tree can break Winry's automail._

Objective remembered, he scrambled to his feet and began the trek down the tunnel, as it curved upwards and ended in the floor of an old house, just at the base of a stairwell. For a moment, he was unsure of whether he'd taken the right path or not. Then voices wafted down from the second floor.

_"Bite your tongue, Potter! You may say something you'll regret later!"_ That was definitely Snape.

Remus tried to mediate. _"Severus, please! This isn't the time to-"_

_"And **you**. I told the Headmaster you would help that wretch get into the school, but the old fool didn't listen."_

_"For the last bloody time, Remus had nothing to do with this!"_ Ed tensed. He didn't recognize that voice... Black, perhaps? _"You put your keen and penetrating mind to the case and, as usual, come to the wrong conclusion! Nobody helped me, I got here on my own!"_

Yep. Definitely Black. Silently drawing his pistol, Ed covered the safety switch with a hand, masking the telltale click.

_"Silence!"_Snape roared, and he actually got it, if only because Black was probably so incensed he couldn't speak- he certainly sounded that way before._ "You don't seem to realize your position, Black... wandless... weakened... I could subdue you and hand your sorry carcass back to the Dementors before you could even blink."_

_"Severus, this is about more than just some festering wound from twenty years ago!" _Remus was beginning to lose his patience, Ed surmised, as his foot fell on a particularly squeaky step. _"If you would just stop for a moment and-"_

_"Incarcerous!"_

Ed supposed that must have been a spell, because a moment later, he heard the sound of ropes being drawn tight, Black shouting some obscenity at Snape, and a thud. Throwing stealth to the wind, he started up the stairs without a care for how much they squeaked.

_"You sonuva-"_

Just as Ed reached the top of the stairs, he saw Snape, standing in the doorway, turn his wand on Black. Right as he opened his mouth to cast the spell, Ed lunged for him, raising his pistol up and cracking it over the back of his head. He fell to the ground, unconscious, wand rolling out of his hand harmlessly.

Right at the same moment, as the rest of the room that Snape had been blocking became visible to him, he saw red sparks flying at him from Harry's wand, and had no more time than to blink and raise his right arm to block before they hit him.

* * *

_He woke slowly from a shallow sleep, fast, undiscernable French blaring from the cheap hotel radio nearby. With a groan, he slammed his hand down on the 'off' button, rolling onto his back and rubbing his eyes. He blinked once, letting the light flood into his retinae from the hotel window._

_Strasbourg, France. Their first official stop in the country, with the German border just behind them. It was a nice town, but Ed refused to get attached. They had talked of where they would settle and find work, and decided on the USA while on the train. Hohenheim had done research and found that after a complete crash of the stock market in 1929 and a deep recession in the early eighties, the country's economy was growing. It was their best chance._

_The door squeaked open, and a somewhat short boy with newly trimmed dirty blonde hair walked in, with a small bag on his arm. His expression brightened when he saw Ed was awake._

_"Good morning, brother. I got breakfast." A smile. He walked into the small kitchenette in the room. Hohenheim was out making travel arrangements. They had thought it best to let Ed sleep in after the shock of discovering a friend's death._

_"There's this little bakery down the street whose owner speaks some English." Al said, pulling items out of the bag. "I got some fresh-baked bread and jam, and these little things called croissants that-"_

_Al's voice fell silent when arms encircled him from behind, and a forehead pressed into his shoulder. He froze, turning his head slightly. "Ed...?"_

_"Are... are you..." Ed murmured, fearful. "Are you really here?"_

_Al sighed, with a fond, sad look. He had expected this. The clinginess. The need for confirmation. It didn't make it any less heartbreaking._

_"I'm real, Ed. I'm not going anywhere."_

_Al could feel the tension drain from his brother's frame, with a shaky sigh. If it was possible, the arms held him tighter. Gently, he reached back and set his hand on Ed's head. _

_The pair jumped when Al's stomach growled loudly. Ed found it hard to stifle a laugh, while Al blushed. "What? I'm hungry."_

_"That... smells really good. I don't think I've had croissants before." Ed breathed, eyeing the bread hungrily. Al grinned. _

_"We'll try them together, then." Al said, pulling the warm croissants from their wrappings. He handed one to Ed, and bit into the pastry lightly, surprised at the light texture._

_"Are you all right, Edward?"_

_Ed looked up mid-bite, surprised. "Huh?"_

"Talk to me, Ed. Are you all right?"

He woke slumped against the door, with a pounding head and limbs that felt like lead, feeling like a train just hit him. Remus was crouched before him, apparently unbound. He held a black wand in his right hand, eyeing him with concern. Ed's memories came back to him in a rush- the old house, the killer, and the teacher he'd just assaulted. He rubbed his eyes as the fog in his mind cleared.

"Ugh." Ed groaned. "Define 'all right'."

With one last appraising glance, Remus stood, turning back to Black, who sat on the bed nearby, Crookshanks purring in his lap. With an effortless flick of the wrist, Remus tossed Snape's wand to him, and Black handed back what Ed supposed was Remus'.

"Where were we?"

"Peter." Black growled. He didn't need to say 'Pettigrew'; Ed already had a good idea of where this was going.

Ed, from where he was seated, cast his eyes about for his pistol. He found it lying a few feet in front of him, and knocked it within arms reach with his foot, curling his hand around it protectively.

A high-pitched squeaking noise became perceptible to Ed then, coming from the corner where a rat was held defensively in Ron's hands, squirming wildly. Ed frowned. _They think that a person can turn into a rat? I suppose it's not impossible, considering what I've seen, but still..._

"I told you, he's mad!" Ron declared, in a quivering voice. "Scabbers is just a rat, he's not a-"

"Just let me have him, Ron." Remus said wearily, holding out a hand. "If it turns out he's just a rat, I'll give him back. It's not going to hurt him."

By the time Ron finally relinquished his pet, Ed had staggered to his feet, clinging to the precarious doorjamb for purchase. Harry's attention was riveted to either Remus or Black- with a furious glint in his eyes, too- and Ron was sitting on the floor behind him, with a bloody leg. Hermione looked ready to have a panic attack, wringing her hands and glancing between the two teachers in the room alternatively.

"Ready, Sirius?" Remus said, holding the rat at arm's length by the scruff. Black nodded grimly.

"I've been ready."

Ed glanced toward Black as he stood at the ready, There was a sudden flash of light that blinded him temporarily, and he winced and covered his eyes. When he opened them again, the rat was glowing brightly on the floor, and abruptly began to grow, lose fur in favor of clothing. Toes became fingers- nine of them- small, beady black eyes became watery and grayish. There was an overwhelming washed-out quality to the man that now stood before him, short, hunched and balding, and looking scared out of his wits. Black trembled with anger.

A sudden throb of his aching head made Ed groan softly, blurring his vision and hampering his hearing; it was like somebody stuffed cotton balls in his ears. He figured the pain in the crown of his head was from when he whacked it against the doorframe... it would explain why he was only feeling it now. Worry began to grow in the pit of his stomach as vertigo took over, pitching him off-balance, unbeknownst to the others in the room. He'd never reacted this badly to a bump on the head... was it the spell?

With supreme effort, he fought down a surge of nausea, closing his eyes tightly. There was an exchange of words going on, one voice sounding heated and shouting, the other whining and high-pitched. He raised his head and blinked hard, confirming what he'd seen- yup. Vermin turned into... well... vermin. The human variety. His sight gradually resolved itself, voices growing clearer again.

"-died, rather than betray your friends, as we would have done for you!"

Black was panting, red in the face with righteous anger directed at Pettigrew, who was cowering in the corner. The children stood, horrified and frozen.

"You should have known, Peter, that if Voldemort didn't kill you, then we would." Remus actually _growled,_ standing side-by-side with Black. Ed couldn't find any reason to stop them.

But apparently, miraculously, Harry could. He jumped between them, facing down two men who were ready, poised and willing to kill. "Stop! Don't kill him!"

"Harry." Black said, a bit testily. "This piece of vermin is the reason you have no parents. Would you really-"

Black's voice was curtailed by a shout as Pettigrew made a mad dash for the open door. Remus lunged after him, but both seemed to be forgetting that there was one more person by the only way out.

Ed jumped to the side, placing himself right in the middle of the doorway, and, winding his right arm back, slammed the fist into Pettigrew's face. The impact sent him flying back a good four feet, making Remus dodge to the side to avoid being hit. He cringed, leaning over Pettigrew to get a better view of him, knocked out cold.

"Ed, really." Remus sighed. "Did you have to hit him with your _right_ hand?"

"He looked like he had a thick skull. I didn't want to break my hand." Ed shrugged.

"That's exactly what I mean, Harry! He used you as a distraction, and almost got away!" Black said, gesturing pointedly to the prone form on the floor.

"I know he's a horrible person." Harry conceded. "But we'll take him to the castle. After that, the dementors can have him."

Black mulled this over, shooting Pettigrew a glance. "You're the only one who has a right to decide, Harry. But still- think of what he did..."

"If anyone deserves a lifetime in Azkaban, it's him. I can't help thinking death would be too kind." Harry said, in a surprisingly calm tone.

"He's right." Remus agreed. "We'll take him to the castle. Sirius?"

Sirius glancd over to Remus and sighed. "All right." He said, almost defeatedly. "But two of us should still be chained to _that_, just incase."

"Hey. You three, over here." Ed said, calling the three teenagers over to him. Hermione and Harry moved to comply, but Ron stood defiantly on the spot, weight on his uninjured leg.

"No." He said. "I'll do it."

He started to limp over to Pettigrew, but Hermione stopped him momentarily. She conjured a splint for his leg, then moving to walk over to Ed. As Remus revived Pettigrew and Black conjured chains to restrain him, Ed fought the urge to sigh.

This was going to be a long night.

* * *

He cursed under his breath as his foot caught on a stone, automail responding sluggishly to his commands. It always did that when he was concussed.

"P-Professor?"

It was a small voice from behind him, from Hermione. She was eyeing him with concern as she climbed down into the tunnel, nearly taking a fall herself. Ed caught her by the arm before she fell.

"Are you okay?" he said, feeling the trembling of her body through her arm. She nodded shakily, as if she was unsure.

"I-I am. I just- I wanted to say- I'm sorry." Hermione said. "For knocking you out earlier." She clarified.

Ed grinned, with a minute shake of the head. "Don't worry about it. I have a hard head. 'Sides, you were aiming for Snape, anyway, right?"

She nodded. "Did- did you know? After all that went on in there, all that was said... you were awfully calm."

Ed shrugged, staring ahead with one hand firmly on the grip of his pistol, finger on the trigger, held in front of him with both hands like the gun safety classes outlined. "Not really. Remus had a hunch. I just went with it."

Hermione swallowed, with a silent nod. The two of them were a fair distance behind Black and Harry, who seemed to be carrying on some sort of awkward conversation... what were you supposed to say to an estranged godfather, anyway? A slight pained noise from his left made him look back to Hermione's drawn face; she was watching Snape's head scrape the ceiling. Neither Black nor Harry seemed to care.

"Hey, don't look so pale." He chided gently, trying to calm her. "Nobody's hurt- well, not seriously, anyway. It'll be fine as soon as we get back to the school."

"Oh, I hope so." Hermione said uncertainly. Ed stood back and watched her carefully as she climbed up the steep entrance to the tunnel, grasping Black's outstretched hand to help her up. Ed made it out well enough on his own, as Harry and Black shifted their focus back to Pettigrew. It startled Ed when the sky began to lighten, almost like a cold, silvery sunlight.

The light was almost glaring in it's intensity, like the glow of Manhattan on the edge of the horizon at night. Ed's heart dropped to his stomach when he turned around and saw what was casting it.

A silver satellite, cratered and ominously round, above the drifting eastern clouds.

"Oh no."

* * *

Ooh, cliffhanger (not really). I'll try not to take too long with the next one, but I can't give an estimate... I'll probably break it. But it won't be another year, I promise. :)

A lot of this may seem like a mere insert of a character, as the main events haven't changed much at all. My excuse? Ed hasn't been in their world long enough to make any big changes in plot... and as I said, 'pilot run'. :)


	9. Chapter 8: Year's End

EDIT 08/03/2010: Sorry, but I had to remove the last chunk of this. In explanation, this was a rough draft that I never really meant to post... when I'm writing stories like this, I sometimes take chunks of the first draft and copy them into another file where I fill in the missing bits with plot that works better, but this was the old file which still had some parts I meant to cut. The sorting hat scene was meant to be the last.

I'll try to incorporate the Remus-Ed interaction at the end in the next chapter, but pieces of it will be gone. D: Sorry about this.

END EDIT

(Am I the only one who is annoyed to all hell that FF keeps removing breakers and forces us to use theirs? AUGH!)

See? It wasn't a year this time. Just... eight months. Yeah...

D8 Oh my lord, I know this is dragging on like a slug in winter, but you'll have to bear with me. Now that year one is over, I still have quite a bit more work to do. :X

Enjoy the new chapter. :)

* * *

Ed was rooted to the spot. Before him stood his friend of nearly one year, just now realizing that he was firmly hit by the cold, harsh glow of the full moon. His eyes widened slightly in shock, wand slipping out of his hand. Ed's thoughts desperately returned to the neglected elixir sitting on his desk, and found himself feeling incredibly _stupid_ for not somehow bringing it with him.

He watched in horror as all traces of humanity left Remus' eyes, the sentient thought switching off like a light extinguished. His pupils dilated to a lupine size, nearly drowning the hazel in his iris.

"Remus!"

Black lunged forward, and for the first time that night, Ed saw real concern and fear in his eyes as he ran to his friend, grabbed him by the arms. Remus' eyes slammed shut as his jaw clenched, with bared teeth whose canines seemed to be growing rapidly. He threw back his head and screamed in pain, and Ed was almost sick to hear the sound of bone warping and cracking in tandem with it.

Out of the corner of his perception, Ed saw something move. He whirled around, heart pounding hard in his chest, to find Weasley on the ground, and Pettigrew making a run for it. The stubby man flinched hard when he saw Edward's bright, piercing eyes settle on him.

"Don't you even try it!" He shouted, starting in his direction, but a sudden yell from Black stopped him.

"Forget him, take the kids and run!" Black met eyes with Edward, still desperately trying to bring Remus back to himself. "Go, now!"

Ed's jaw worked for a moment, and he whirled back around to face Pettigrew... but saw only a small, furry thing scampering off into the tall grass. It disappeared with a rustle of underbrush thoroughly drowned out by a howl that sounded more lupine than human. There was almost nothing left of Remus Lupin, what stood before him now was a true monster- a werewolf, mindless and bloodthisrty. It lived only to kill and maim. And there wasn't a thing Remus could do to stop it now.

Steeling himself, Edward planted his feet firmly on the ground, guarding the children with his body as well as life. Hermione, along with Harry, were both at Ron's side, trying to wake him.

"You three grab Snape and get to the school." He said, tone broking no argument.

What just a few moments ago were two friends now were two animals, a large dog and a wolf, both snarling, snapping and biting at one another. Ed could see that Remus- the wolf- was the more ferocious one, actively directing his poisonous bite at the neck and limbs. Black was trying desperately to keep up, as well as injure his friend as little as possible. The wolf's jaws found purchase on the dog's right foreleg and bit down. A pained yelp was proof of the frightening biting force.

"Sirius!" Harry yelled, wand drawn.

"Don't!" Ed snapped, throwing his arms around the boy's waist and hauling him back. "I told you to go!"

"I'm not leaving him!"

"_Yes you are!_" Ed roared, shoving Harry back toward the school so hard he almost pitched the boy clear off his feet. "Damn it, Harry, when I tell you to do something, I _don't_ mean later! Get the hell out of here before you get yourself killed!"

There was a dull thud and the sound of a body tumbling on the ground from behind them. A snarling bark sounded, and Ed had time only to shove Harry back and throw an arm up to guard his face before the wolf's claws came slashing down across it.

A yell of pain was torn from his throat, the force of the blow knocking him to the ground. There, pinned to the dirt by the beast's massive forelegs, he got his first clear look at a werewolf.

It's lips were curled back in a perpetual snarl, horrifyingly large teeth glinting with Black's blood. Saliva dripped down from it's short, wide muzzle in ropy strands, and the eyes set above showed no sign of human recognition.

Ed, for the first time in years, well and truly feared for his life. He was paralyzed, for one heart-stopping moment, by sheer terror.

But in the next, his stubborn, resourceful mind reached up and crushed the fear, unwilling to let him freeze up and die in such a place. He grabbed the muzzle with his automail hand, using the strengthened gears and pneumatics to overwhelm the powerful muscles in the wolf's neck. The tips of his fingers just barely met around each side of it, and he poured all of his strength into pushing the teeth away from his body.

Torquing his body to the side, he swung his left foot up into the wolf's ribcage, both satisfied and horrified when he heard a crack. The beast yelped, an almost piteous noise, and tore itself away from his grasp reflexively, howling in rage when a black dog leapt on it from behind. Ed took the opportunity to surge to his feet, and yanked off his coat.

Black's upper-hand was short-lived, as the wolf reached up with surprisingly dexterous paws and sank their claws into the thick fur, throwing him off behind him. Black's body tumbled down the hillside toward the lake.

Ed shifted into a fighting stance, settling his weight on his toes and kept himself ready to dodge. Fists clenched, he lunged forward and slammed his automail fist into Remus' cheekbone, apologizing profusely in his mind.

He paled considerably when the werewolf didn't even sway. The beast lunged again, with a roar.

"Sirius!"

"Harry, NO!"

"GO!" He shouted, as Remus clamped his jaw down on Ed's metal arm, nearly yanking him from the ground as he thrashed his head from side to side. Through the corner of his vision, he saw both Harry and Hermione running toward the hillside. He opened his mouth to shout after them, but his words were lost in a surprised yell as he was lifted clear off his feet, and then forcibly hauled over the beast's head and thrown, body hurled into a rocky outcropping. His skull rebounded off the stone hard enough to make his vision go black for a moment, and when it came back, he was lying on the ground with a hot, sticky liquid dripping down from the crown of his head.

A warbling howl drifted up from somewhere. There was a dull, golden light pulsing off in the distance, in tandem with the throbbing of his head. He felt he was drawn to it, like a moth to flame, but... why? Why bother, when his head was aching and his limbs felt so heavy? It didn't seem worth it to get up and make his body hurt more.

As if independent from his decision, his body forced him up on trembling arms, as if it knew something important that he didn't. Something was dripping into his eyes, clouding his already impaired vision to near-blindness, but he pulled himself forward, through the dewy grass and over to a rock. He staggered unsteadily to his feet.

_Need to know... not... murderer... who...?_

_School. Get to the school._

His feet were unwieldy things beneath him, treading on such unsteady ground that he nearly fell. There was buzzing and ringing in his ears to go along with the howling he wasn't sure he was really hearing.

Grass. Rocks. Dirt path, and then... stone. Winding left and right, then up in tiers, steps he wasn't sure he could scale. His equilibrium failed suddenly, and he managed to catch himself before he fell.

His toe caught on the step, pitching him forward onto the stairs once more, and he found himself feebly crawling the rest of the way up, vision stuttering and fading at the corners, as his head spun.

With a heave of determination, he hauled himself back to his feet at the landing, and took a few wavering steps into the cavernous hall, before his muscles went limp, eyes rolling back into his head, and he pitched forward onto the stone floor.

* * *

_"...fessor?"_

Slowly, he pried his heavy eyelids open, sight flashing with every throb of his heart. The sounds around him were convoluted and muffled, just like his surroundings, which resolved into nothing more than vague blobs of color.

Belatedly, he noticed hands on his arm, holding him up in an awkward position above the floor, and yet more hands found his shoulders and tried to hoist him up as he stirred, lifted his head and gazed unfocusedly at the one on his arm.

_"Professor? Can you hear me?"_

He heard the words, but they were nothing more than gibberish to him then, for all he could understand. There was something sticky on his forehead that was drying and flaking off, smelling vaguely metallic. The person continued talking to him, with a vague tone of concern in their voice, but before he could bring himself to focus on the words, his body forced him to heave in a deep breath.

Instinctively, he snapped his head to the side and keeled over before he retched, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow. There were startled yelps of disgust from the people around him as they scuttled out of the way, though all his empty stomach could force up was bile and saliva.

He moaned weakly at the end of this episode, curling in on himself as a new voice pervaded his mind, barking something stern at the others. The hands disappeared as a shadow fell over him, a person settling between himself and the light.

His vision was starting to clear now, the buzz in his ears fading away, and he immediately recognized the wizened woman in front of him. His hand flashed out to grab her sleeve as he remembered something important. He had to tell her... something... what was it?

She was waiting for him to speak, critical eyes focused on him, as he tried to get his mouth to form the words he couldn't quite recall. When he did speak, it came out as a slurred, jumbled mess, but she still seemed to get the gist of what he said, eyes widening and issuing an order to the older students nearby. They disappeared shortly thereafter.

"No..." He moaned. "Not... not B-black... it's..."

He tried to form the words, as his tongue began to feel thick and heavy in his mouth, lips falling slack, and the floor came up to meet him again as he fell under.

* * *

_"Hold your tongue, Granger!"_

_"I'm telling the truth!"_

The first voice was incensed, the second indignant and unyielding. The shouting was intensifying the ache in his head, along with the ringing in his ears. Part of him wondered why the hell these people were arguing in his bedroom. Weakly, he dragged a heavy hand from under the covers to rub his eyes, and was surprised when his fingertips felt cloth just above them... a bandage?

Puzzled, he braced an elbow beneath his body, and hissed slightly in surprised pain when the shift in position sent fresh blood surging up to his head. He managed to get himself into a sitting position, and opened his eyes. Snape and Hermione were arguing in the middle of the room, with Madam Pomphrey demanding they take it outside. There were rows of beds on either side of the room, with towering windows behind them that showed the inky black night sky.

He froze. _This is the infirmary. What the hell am I doing here?_

His left hand flew to his brow again, feeling around until he found the spot that hurt most. Right at the crown of his head was the most tender, feeling almost bruised, like he had fallen and hit it somewhere. What scared him was that he could not remember doing it.

"Edward!" He jumped, blinking in surprise as Hermione advanced on him, fire in her eyes that was directed at someone else. "Thank heaven you're awake! Now you can tell them what happened, right?"

"I...what?" Ed floundered, reaching out a hand to steady himself on the head of the bed. Hermione was standing at his bedside now, with an urgent, frantic look on her face.

"Don't you remember? Tell them, Professor!"

He looked at her as though she had three heads, and, realizing that there were other eyes on him, he looked to other parts of the room, where stood the headmaster, Snape, and a man Ed did not know. He began to grow uncomfortable at the attention, his discomfort all the more amplified that he had no idea what he was supposed to be remembering.

A look of realization flitted across Dumbledore's face. "Ah. Miss Granger, I'm afraid it's possible that Professor Elric may have amnesia. He did suffer quite a bump to the head, after all."

Hermione turned around to face him, utterly crestfallen. Ed, still having no answer as to why he was lying in the hospital wing with an aching head and no recollection of anything past what he guessed was the previous night, adjusted himself into a more comfortable position on the bed.

"Headmaster, if I may interrupt?" Snape interjected. "What are we to do with Black?"

"He is restrained, Severus. You need not worry." Dumbledore said evenly, with Ed watching intently. That man, the one he'd never seen before, hadn't said a word since he woke up. He didn't have much more time to puzzle over the man, as Madam Pomphrey was in his face the next second.

"Are you planning on making a regular occurrence of this?" She said, somewhat peevishly. "I might have to hire help."

Ed frowned as conversation buzzed in the background, glancing up as Harry got into it with Snape. He couldn't find it in himself to come up with a sarcastic retort. "Sorry." He muttered.

"Well, this is what fighting a werewolf will get you; you're lucky you weren't bitten." She said, though with a bit less heat. "Does anything else hurt?"

Ed's eyebrows ticked upward at the word 'Werewolf', and it took him a moment to catch up with her words. "N-no, well, my arm does... a little. I just wish I could remember."

"It may come back to you in time. Be patient."

She stood after a moment, and checked the bandages on his head. "You're free to leave, but it's straight to bed with you, am I understood?"

He nodded absently, still deep in thought. Save for the surgery, this was the first time he found himself totally unable to recall something. Sure, he was grateful not to remember the agonizing hours of having wires spliced to his nerves and bolts drilled into his bones, but this time it was different. He knew there was something important... something about a dog, maybe... but every time he felt himself getting close, it slipped away.

He rubbed his eyes. _All right, forget it. Sleep comes first._

Tuning out the noise, he pulled the covers off and put both his legs over the side of the bed, searching for his shoes. He found them on the floor next to the bed, crusted with mud, but still better than walking on cold, dirty stone in socks. Just as he reached out to grab them, a new pair of feet came into view. He looked up into the face of their owner, round glasses framing his green eyes.

"You really can't remember?"

He shook his head, immediately wishing he hadn't. _Damn it, I hate vertigo._

"Sorry, kid. I really am." He said, tapping his shoe on the floor to settle his foot inside it. "I don't remember. And I'm not having somebody rifle around in my head and possibly cause more damage than there already is."

Harry's already dour expression- he was no doubt still fuming over his row with Snape- only darkened. He looked desperate, like he was trying to prove something but no one would believe him. "Even if it meant an innocent man might die?"

"Whatever's going on is none of my business." He came to his feet slowly, grabbing the collar of his coat from where it lay on the next bed, and draped it over his arm.

"You could prove his innocence, and you won't even _try?"_

Ed cringed, the sudden increase in volume sending his head reeling. "Damn, kid, quit yelling."

"He could have had his soul sucked out by now, do you realize that? And all because you're being selfish!"

"Selfish?" Ed repeated incredulously, standing over the teenager. "I have an icepick stabbing into my head and no memory whatsoever of the entire past _day_ and you're calling me 'selfish'?"

"Harry!" Hermione said desperately, glancing between the two. "It's not his fault that-"

"I hope you're happy!" He spat, venom in his words. "Sirius Black is out there suffering a fate worse than death because of you!"

"Look, I don't _fucking_ remember, okay? Get off my case!"

"That's _enough_!" Madam Pomphrey's voice carried over both of theirs, breaking the argument in two. One of her hands was planted firmly on her hip, the other shaking a finger at the both of them. "I will _not _tolerate that foul language in my hospital wing! If you want to have it out, then both of you take it somewhere else!"

"Gladly." Ed seethed, brushing past Harry none-too-gently on his way toward the door. And to think, he'd actually _liked _the kid.

He stopped short when he nearly ran into Dumbledore in the slightly ajar doorway. He muttered an unapologetic 'Sorry', dodging around him into the hallway, not waiting for him to speak. If his head was throbbing before, it was getting pummeled now. Damn brat.

* * *

Slowly, with heavy, tired steps, Ed skulked over to his bed and collapsed, curling up on the mattress. He groped about for the covers, pulling them up over his shoulders. His aching head demanded stillness, threatening to pitch him every which way if he even dared stand.

There was a sudden crack, like muted gunfire, and a tray of food appeared on his bedside table. He smirked ruefully. _This must be Madam Pomphrey's work. Probably told the kitchen I'd be hungry._

His stomach voiced it's confirmation, gurgling loudly. The scent of the food was wafting toward him, trying to beckon him out of the bed he'd just sank into, but he just didn't have the energy to get up. When he closed his eyes next, they stayed there, and his mind fuzzed over.

He dozed for a while, fitfully, his mind still scrambling to pick up the scattered pieces of the evening and day.

_"Werewolf... innocence... soul sucked out, and you won't even..."_

It wasn't his fault... he wasn't even supposed to be there. He wasn't involved in any way, he was just walking around the school... watching himself on the map of moving footprints, as smoke curled in the air from a goblet on the desk in the dark, candlelit office. Candles burning red and white and yellow, bright like the full moon, flickering, with little orbs of wax falling down their sides and cooling on the base of the candelabra.

An old, moth-eaten house. Light came from the pale pre-moon ambience, the late remnants of the evening sun. Everything was wrong, he was wrong, the children were wrong... and a murderer was vindicated that night. Not a murderer. A man. A dog, big and black with piercing blue-grey eyes, hackles bristled, blood glinting off of it's paws.

And another, a tawny-colored beast of myth, claws in his arm. Sharp golden eyes, mere inches from his own, and he knew terror.

His whole body jolted, as if an electric shock had struck it. His eyes snapped open, and a dizzy, incongruent melange of memories came back to him. The entire day, replayed in seconds before his eyes, ending with the thought of a dementor unleashed on an innocent man.

"Oh, shit." He whispered. Harry was right. Damn it all, the kid was right.

He threw back the covers, lunging off of his bed with a force that made his injured skull scream in protest, but he ignored it. His shoes were by the door, snatched up and slid back on as he stumbled out of his bedroom and up the stairs, out of his quarters and down the hall.

He would not let another man die because of him.

* * *

_Please let him still be there._

He had to find the Headmaster. He was the only one who would listen, the only one who could do something. With every hurried step, Ed felt an incorporeal hand tightening around his chest, images of Marcoh and Nina and Hughes flashing through his mind.

Damn it, he would NOT let another person die because of his carelessness. There had been far too many of them before, paying the ultimate price for his neglect, his hubris. His feet finally carried him to the door of the hospital wing, when-

He stopped dead in his tracks- physically and vocally- as the two teenagers before him, with a golden chain draped about their necks, disappeared into thin air.

He didn't have any time to absorb this, because immediately after that, a black-haired boy and a girl with bushy brown hair ran past him into the hospital wing, panting with exertion.

The two were grinning at eachother, and then noticed him and paled. His hand was still wrapped around the doorknob, face frozen, and he suddenly seemed to come out of his trance and shook his head furiously.

"Okay, you know what? I'm not even gonna ask. No. I am going back to bed, and I'm gonna go to sleep, and when I wake up in the morning, I'm gonna have a hangover or... or some kind of withdrawal from whatever the HELL somebody spiked my food with. You people are insane."

The last was a more of a mumbled attempt at trying to convince himself his mind was not coming unhinged more than it was an insult. He turned around, with a hand to his aching head, ignoring Harry's bewildered 'What the bloody hell is he on about?' and Ron's even _more_ bewildered spluttering at him not to 'leave me alone with these two!'.

Ed found that gargoyles were either fast learners, or had a very strong self-preservation instinct, because the one guarding the headmaster's office merely jumped aside without a single word from him this time. His breath was heaving in his lungs by the time he reached the office door, ajar as it was, and if he'd looked up, he would have seen a knowing look on the wizened man's face.

"Headmaster, I remember now what happened. Black isn't-"

"You need not defend Sirius Black to me, Edward." Dumbledore said, steepling his fingers in that irritating way that Mustang used to. "I know."

"...You do?"

"I do."

Ed frowned, not understanding. Then, remembering the disappearing act that Hermione and Harry pulled off earlier, he snapped his jaw shut.

"Right. Of course you do. Nevermind, then." He turned to leave.

"Although..." Dumbledore drawled, as though continuing a thought. "Tonight's events have been very confusing. And if Sirius is to be proved innocent one day, there is one thing that might be asked of you."

"And that would be...?" Ed raised a brow. "What? Testifying on his behalf in court?"

"Something to that effect." Dumbledore stood, walking around his desk to the side where Ed stood. "You, Edward, were the only person present in the Shrieking Shack at the time of this discussion that was not biased- the children and Remus all favor the idea of Sirius' innocence, while Severus is quite hateful of him. True, you may have been influenced by Remus, but you were, for the most part, separated from the emotions of the event; an objective observer.

"A testimonial is a very fickle thing- easily fabricated from lies. A more solid piece of evidence can be used in this case, however- your memory itself."

Ed swallowed, suddenly wanting a little more distance from the man. "...What do you mean?"

"Extraction of the memory from your mind." Seeing how Ed's eyes widened slightly at the word 'extraction', Dumbledore couldn't help a small smile. "The process is not painful, hardly unpleasant. It will only take a moment, if you allow me to."

Ed hesitated in answering. He wasn't too keen on the idea of having anything 'extracted' from his head, much less having the business end of a wand that close to something important- namely, his brain. He'd seen what they could do, destructively speaking, and he paled to imagine what his head would look like after. On the other hand, there was a man's life and name at stake, someone who had been wrongly vilified for twelve years because of the backstabbing actions of a person he thought to be a friend.

After a moment, he sighed, pushing the worries to the back of his mind. _If he's so blase about it, it can't be that bad. _"...Okay. I'll do it."

He began to unwind the bandages from his head, and stopped when he realized he had no idea how to go about the whole... 'extraction' thing. Dumbledore seemed to notice this, and directed him.

"Please, have a seat here. It would be best to remove your bandages for the time being." He gestured to a nearby chair, and Ed pulled the last of the linen from his head, and sat down carefully.

He watched closely as Dumbledore opened an oddly-shaped cabinet on the other side of his office, which contained multiple revolving racks of small glass vials, each filled with wispy, translucent not-quite-liquid. In the center was a large dish, which held what looked like water with darker streaks of gray and black swirling within it.

Dumbledore plucked an empty vial from it's place in the rack, and pulled the cork out with a small _pop._ He pulled his wand from the sleeve of his robes, holding it in one hand, and the vial in the other. He then turned to walk back to where Edward sat.

Seeing Ed's uncomprehending frown, Dumbledore smiled. "You did not realize memories are more than images in one's own head, did you?"

Ed frowned deeper, tilting his head slightly as the scientist in him tried to determine just how a memory in the mind equaled a vial of... stuff, in the tangible world. "But... I don't understand... how does it, you know... come out? Through my nose, or something?"

"Edward, you cannot pin down the intricacies of magic with logic. Many a man has tried over the millennia, and not a one has succeeded." Dumbledore smiled that odd smile again, the one that made Ed feel vaguely patronized. "And no, I will draw the memory out with my wand through your temple. Sit back in the chair and recall the memory as clearly as you are able, I will do the rest."

Ed stifled an unsatisfied sigh, but did as told. He sat back, pushing his bangs behind his ear and closed his eyes, focusing on the conversation from the shack. After Dumbledore apparently felt he'd given Ed a sufficient amount of time to relax, Ed felt the tip of the wand press slightly into his temple.

Cold tendrils snaked through the flesh around it, and he fought the urge to squirm as they slowly slithered toward where the wand met his skin, following it as it drew away. They stuck to it like strands of glue, leaving an unpleasant tingling sensation in their wake, like having hot and cold water poured on his brain in rapid succession. He shuddered reflexively, rubbing his head as soon as the wand was gone.

Dumbledore chuckled lightly. "It is quite an odd feeling, I know. The tingling will subside momentarily."

Ed blinked, shaking his head almost like a dog. "Can't say I'd like to do _that_ again."

As he pushed the discarded bandages into his pocket, Edward gave pause. "Headmaster?"

"Yes?"

"Will that really help him?" Ed asked, something searching in his tone. Almost desperate. "If this ever goes to trial, I mean."

Dumbledore slowed in his ministrations, placing the small vial back amongst it's companions. "I cannot say for certain, Edward. But I do have confidence that it will help prove his innocence someday."

Ed swallowed, a bit of the uneasy sensation fluttering in his chest dissipating. "Right. I hope so."

Dumbledore nodded. "As do I. Now, I believe that it is a good juncture at which to remind you of Madam Pomphrey's orders to get some rest. Your amnesia may be resolved, but bumps on the head take longer to heal."

"Heh. Yeah." Ed rubbed the back of his head gingerly, his left hand feeling the golf-ball-sized lump there. It wasn't as swollen as before, but it still hurt like a bitch. "Guess I'll be going, then."

Out of nowhere, a voice drifted from further back in the office, from a fire flickering on the hearth. Ed couldn't quite make out the words, but it sounded urgent.

Dumbledore glanced toward it, then turning back to Edward with a nod. "I'm afraid I must take this. Goodnight, Edward."

"Yeah, don't let me keep you." He backed away from the desk, then turning to leave as Dumbledore disappeared into the rooms further back in his office.

"You're an odd one, Edward Elric."

Edward started momentarily, glancing upwards at the paintings, only to find them 'sleeping'. He frowned, turning to see if Dumbledore was still in the room... which he wasn't.

"The hell?" He muttered.

Just then, something black shifted to his right, and he whirled around to find a tall hat unfolding from itself. Two wrinkles in the cloth outlined the sorting hat's 'eyes', another one beneath them made it's mouth.

"In all of my centuries of service to the school, I've never quite come across one such as you." It elaborated.

Edward, faced with a talking, sentient hat, forced himself to remember the words that the headmaster spoke only minutes ago. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You don't seem to_ belong_ anywhere, lad. You have the cunning and sly wit of a Slytherin, but none of the malice. You are fiercely loyal, yet strong-minded and independent, intelligent but impatient and brash, and though you are brave, it is almost to the point of reckless stupidity." The words were said with an evaluating curiosity, and a tinge of confusion. "I admit, you intrigue me."

"Flattery will get you nowhere, you millennium-old pile of cowhide. What's your point?"

"My point, young lad, is that I can see in you a sense of not knowing where you want to be, or where you want to go. You seem quite lost, if I may say. Perhaps I could shed some light on this dilemma?"

Edward, for a moment, was silent. He contemplated telling the hat to buzz off, as he knew perfectly well where he belonged and also knew why he could never go back there. Of course he would seem out of place. The other side of the gate had been his home, and he longed to return, but he meant what he said to his brother on the ship to New York those four years ago- _This is our home, now. We can't just walk around pretending we don't care what happens._

"Thanks, but no." He turned back toward the door, shoving his hands in his pockets. "I think I'd like to figure that out on my own, however long it takes."

The hat 'blinked' with a shadow of a frown. As Edward had already walked out of the office, he didn't see it slouch down slightly to go back to sleep, nor did he hear it speak.

"Something is coming for you, boy. Stay mindful."


	10. Chapter 9: Bonds

I don't know if it registered on story alerts, but I made a slight change to the last chapter and removed the last part. Go back and read the A/N there if you'd like to know more.

This chapter begins with a few paragraphs which were formerly on the end of the last. Gotta love rough drafts. I really need to organize my files better...

Anyway, in reference to the chapter title... just to make this a little more reader-friendly, seeing how it's going to be roughly 50-70 chapters when finished, I thought I'd title them to make it a bit easier to navigate. Anything that occurs outside of the dates set by the books- IE, summer break- will be marked 'Interlude'; but don't take that to mean they're any less important to the plot than the others... ;) There will probably be anywhere from two to five chapters like this between each year, the first of each year marked with I, second with II, and so on. Each interlude also gets it's own 'creative' title as well. Okay? Okay. If it doesn't make sense, I hope it will once I post them. XD

If you feel like this story is a bit too lighthearted (like I do... muhahahaha. }:D ), then worry not. It will get dark. Veery dark. Say, in book six. :X And seven.

Also, sometime in the near future I will be going back and fixing the havoc that 's retroactive formatting change wreaked on the first few chapters. As in, lost italics, removed breaks, and for some reason, words that got omitted. I'll also be adding a few bits and pieces here and there. Nothing that will affect the plot, just fixing some OOC moments and weak dialogue and narrative. I can now see why it took Ms. Rowling ten years to write Philosopher's Stone... writing a large story is always a work in progress, and it's _hard_. And it's my fault for not planning it out better and getting impatient with myself. _That_ is the reason I have around seven or eight 'in-progress' stories on my profile. XD But I have brainstormed some much better sideplots than what I had before, so I guess that's one plus of the drafting stage stretching for so obscenely long.

In other news: over 11k views, 90+ favs and 150+ alert subscriptions? 8O Hoooly crap. I guess people really do like this story. Eh... that makes it a bit daunting. ^^;

And as always, thank you for the above stats, and feedback! It really gets my muses buzzing when I see a new review! :D

* * *

When he woke in the morning, much to his surprise, the ache in his head was lessened.

In his experience, things like head wounds always hurt more the morning after than immediately. Perhaps there was some sort of salve in the bandages. However it happened, he was grateful, because now he had a clear head with which to recall where he'd left his things and gather them up prior to his departure.

It was immediately after classes had ended, and most planned to stay a few more days, but not him. The old castle had become something of a second home to him, and even though he fully planned on returning in the fall, he still sorely missed his brother. Things were easier now, because of his job, and he was grateful for that, but he would be glad to be home for the summer. Perhaps he could secure a part-time summer job to make ends meet until September.

With his own belongings packed up in his customary trunk- and a new shoulder bag, thank god- he wandered down the mostly deserted halls and rapped on a door he'd been to quite a few times in the past year.

"Remus? Can I- oh." He muttered, as the door swung open. He set his luggage down outside in the hall, and stepped in.

He was on the other side of his desk, with his back to the door, stacking papers and folding clothes to pack. "Leaving so soon?"

Ed shrugged. "Yeah, I got no other reason to stay. I'm done grading papers, so-"

Edward stopped dead when Remus turned around, placing things in his open briefcase on the desk. On sight of the deep purple bruises and red, freshly bandaged gashes on his person, Ed could feel his eyes widen and his breath catch. His eyes were shadowed and a bit sunken in his face, his gait uneven as he moved about behind his desk, gathering his belongings.

"Shit." Ed hissed, unable to help himself.

"I know, I know." Remus said, a bit tiredly. "I've looked worse."

The comment only made Ed swallow nervously. "That's... worrying."

Remus shrugged. "It comes with the territory. And from what I hear, I threw you into a rock. I apologize for that."

"Hey, don't feel too bad." Ed rapped on his head. "I have a thick skull, just ask my brother. Besides, I gave you that black eye." He admitted sheepishly, blushing slightly with a guilty look. "And, er... if your ribs hurt, that was me, too."

"Oh, I was wondering about that." Remus mused, almost as if to himself, with a hint of a grin. "Seems you really beat up on me last night."

Ed froze, paling considerably. His silence drew Remus' attention after a moment, and the latter frowned. "That was a _joke_, Ed."

"That_ wasn't_ funny, Remus." Ed snapped, shaken. "I don't like doing that to people. Much less my friends."

"It's called 'dark humor'." Remus stated blandly. "I find it necessary to inject some levity into the situation when I have to experience a living hell every month."

"Remus, I'm sorry. I never wanted to-"

"You did what you had to to protect yourself and the children. No harm done." Remus said, and it appeared he truly meant it. He shrugged his coat onto his shoulders casually, tucking his wand into an interior pocket. "I should be the one apologizing to you for throwing you like a sack of potatoes and gouging your arm."

"You couldn't help that." Ed insisted. "I know at least that much."

"Then we're even." Remus raised a brow, tilting his head slightly. "And if we're both done apologizing, I should probably duck out before the parents get here."

"Don't you mean 'we'?"

"Sorry, but you don't get to leave yet."

Ed's shoulders slumped. "What? Why the hell not?"

"Your appointment at the beginning of the year was so sudden that none of the parents were able to meet you before classes began. You get to hang around and schmooze."

"Oh my god, _no._" Ed balked.

"Yes. They'll be arriving soon, so that gives you about an hour or so to prepare."

Ed groaned, smacking the back of his head against the wall. "Great. So they get to grill me on everything from my age to teaching methods. Perfect."

"Consider yourself lucky. Taking into account the small number of students you had, and the fact that they are ages fifteen to seventeen, you probably won't see many parents this time around."

Ed raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Are you always this chipper?"

Remus laughed to himself, then wincing and thinking better of it when his ribs protested. "Er... not for a long time. Knowing that my best friend isn't a murderous lunatic- well, not a murderer, anyway- does wonders to help my mood, however."

"...Do you know where he is?"

"No, I imagine he's laying low for a while until the heat's off." Remus sighed, grasping the handle of his trunk and starting to the door. Ed stepped to the side and walked with him.

"What about you, then?"

"What about me?"

"You just lost your job. And a place to live." Ed said, hands shoved in his pockets. It wasn't long before they reached the main hall of the school, and stopped on the top of the steps. "I'd offer to let you stay with us, but we're pretty strapped for cash and space already."

"I appreciate the thought, but no." Remus said, shaking his head. "I'd like to find a flat in London, but I have a place in York where I can stay for now." Remus said, adjusting his coat. "Keep in touch?"

"Sure, if I can get my bird to stop trying to rip my hair out."

Remus smiled, turning to leave. "See you around, Ed."

"Yeah. Bye."

Remus waved over his shoulder as he descended the front steps of the school, and started down the path toward the gates.

* * *

"Atwater, Birchwood, Diggory, Farnsworth, Gershwin... uh... Lyndhurst? No, that's wrong. Lyn... something. Damn."

Ed continued muttering as he walked down the hallway, trying to recall the names of his students. He didn't bother calling on the names of his seventh-years, it wasn't likely they'd have their parents here. Chewing on his lip, he hoped beyond all hope that there wouldn't be any parents that wanted to talk to him. It was just _weird._ Everything was, partly because his only experience with school was the little one-room schoolhouse he and the other Risembool kids had attended when they were little. That and his brief stint at a community college to get his GED, which apparently was a prerequisite for anything other than waiting tables or washing dishes, but that was just a test, and he was done.

On the other hand, Hogwarts was _huge._ Hundreds of students as opposed to a puny dozen or so, and a boarding school to boot. Wasn't like they could have conferences throughout the year, so it stood to reason they would do them en-masse like this, but still.

"Lynchfield!" He exclaimed, finally rattling the stubborn name loose in his brain. Now for the other fifty...

"Is there a reason you are shouting surnames in the hallway at random, Edward?"

He stopped, turning in his slow walk to see Minerva McGonnagall watching him with an arched brow, and a shadow of a grin.

"Hey, go easy. It's my first time doing this whole parent-teacher thing, it's hard to remember so many names."

"Hmm." She replied, glancing down at his shirt. "Is something wrong with your tie?"

Ed looked down at the black silk that was draped around his neck. He smiled sheepishly. "I forgot how to tie it. Something about a rabbit and a tree, and there's a fox in there somewhere, I think."

Minerva sighed, waving her wand once, and the tie sprung from his hand to wind itself around his neck, twisting itself into a flawless half-windsor knot. Ed blinked.

"Uh... thanks."

Minerva simply nodded. "May I speak with you, Edward?"

"Sure. Am I in trouble?" He said, tucking the tie into his vest.

"No, nothing of the sort. I just feel it is prudent to warn you of what you may encounter when speaking to the parents." She said, as they began to walk toward the great hall. "There may be a few who feel you are not... fit to teach."

Ed frowned at her. "Any idea why?"

Minerva pursed her lips and sighed. "You were aware of the media's coverage of your being appointed to this position, yes?"

"In passing. I didn't actually see any of the papers."

"Some of the wizarding world's elite were fiercely opposed to the idea of a muggle becoming a teacher at Hogwarts, as I'm sure you know."

"Well, I'm not a muggle. I'm an Alchemist. That solves that problem."

"It makes no difference to them, Edward." Minerva shook her head. "To many, Alchemy is simply an extension of muggle science. It is not thought very highly of, nor was it ever. Alchemists were historical outcasts from both worlds, due to combining elements of both science and magic into one practice."

Ed shrugged. "That's okay. I'm used to being the odd one out." He glanced up at her, and smiled. "I used to travel a lot when I was a teenager. Fitting in never really came naturally to me, so I didn't bother trying."

"...I see. I suppose my concerns were uneccessary, then."

"Appreciated, though." He said, facing forward again. "So long as Lord and Lady Malfoy don't get fresh, we won't have a problem."

"Excellent, considering the Malfoys will not be here. So I expect there to be no... altercations. Am I understood?"

Ed ducked his head slightly, feeling as if he was being scolded. "Yes ma'am."

* * *

"Therefore, one can surmise that after the introduction of what did cholera epidemics subside in developed countries? Elric?"

Alphonse jumped, head snapping up from his notes. "Uh... proper filtration and chlorination of municipal drinking water?"

"Correct." The professor said, with an approving nod. He continued with the extra-credit quiz questions, firing them at other students in the lecture hall. Alphonse went back to his notes, pencil hovering over the last line distractedly. He'd taken up writing in shorthand to jot more information down during the lectures, but it didn't seem to be enough. He would have to consider investing in a tape recorder. Too little too late for this class; though he'd passed with little trouble, finals had already been taken, and this last class of the term was a chance to rack up a little morsel of extra credit for those whose grades were ailing.

The bell rang, and the class began to pack up and exit the hall. Alphonse sighed, closing his notebook and dropping it in his bag, standing from his seat. He swore his back creaked from the hours of sitting down, and made a mental note to drape himself across the couch and relax for an hour or so as soon as he got home, before getting back to work on the textbook.

His pet project was going well, and a nostalgic little distraction from medical school to boot. He'd forgotten how mentally stimulating it could be to research and formulate alchemic theories and record the lessons and fundamentals he'd learned through hard work, trial and error and life experience onto paper to help new people learn the science.

Yes, he was a geek. And yes, he was proud of it.

"Yo, Al!"

He turned around in the hallway, seeing a gangly redhead wave at him from down the way. He waited until the other had maneuvered through the crowd to his side.

"Hey, Joey. What's up?"

"Me and some of my mates were gonna hit the clubs later. Care to tag along? I'm sure the ladies wouldn't let you get bored." Joey offered, waggling his eyebrows obnoxiously. "I've seen them fall all over you for the past three months."

Alphonse grinned. "I'd like to, but I have work to do at home. Maybe some other time?"

"Cor blimey, are you joking? It's end of term, live a little! Screw the work!"

"Sorry, Joe. I'm doing something for my brother. I'll catch up with you later."

"Ah, fine. Be that way. I'll just have to regale you with the fun you missed out on tomorrow."

"You do that." Alphonse said drily. "I'd like to see you try, through the inevitable hangover."

Joey shrugged. "Oh, I'll harass you first thing in the morning, don't you worry."

"Sure."

"Later, mate."

"See you." Alphonse waved, turning and beginning his walk toward the exit again. Joe was one of the first friends he'd made at school, and while he tended to be a bit overzealous when it came to clubbing and hitting on ladies, he was otherwise a good person and a decent friend. Al, to his surprise, was developing a taste for the club environment. 'Being corrupted', as Joey called it. But while he enjoyed spending time out with his friends after school, responsibilities came first.

_That's right, he's coming home this week. I'll have to get it bound and out to the publisher soon. Ed, you'd better be grateful.

* * *

_

In the Great Hall of Hogwarts School, Edward sneezed. He'd thankfully avoided most of the 'schmoozing', as Remus called it, but good luck was not to last. A cheery-looking man stopped as he walked by.

"My, that was a sneeze. Bless you. Are you ill?"

"No, I'm fine. Somebody must be talking about me." Edward said, sniffling. _Why do they say 'bless you'? That doesn't make any sense._

"Oh, you must be the alchemist!" The man said cheerily, and extended a hand, which Edward took. "Amos Diggory, Cedric's my boy! Pleasure to meet you, young man!"

"Um..hi." Ed gritted out, through teeth clenched in what was almost a grimace of a smile. _That's not a handshake, it's a let's-see-if-I-can-yank-your-arm-out-of-it's-socket shake. _

"So you're Edward Elric, then. I must say, I was a bit surprised when I heard someone your age would be teaching students barely four years his junior, but you seem to be doing quite well of it! Cedric has nothing but good things to say about you."

"Really?"

"Ohe yes. He's been Captain of the Hufflepuff Quidditch team from his fourth year, you know. He's a prefect, too, why I wouldn't be surprised if he made head boy next year!"

Just then, an absurd thought struck him. _It's another Hughes._

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing, but the similarities were too glaring to ignore. The glasses, for one. Upbeat demeanor, check. Chattiness, double check. And the obscene doting and fatherly pride of his child was spot on. Oh god, his ribs were killing him. Why was this so funny?

"But enough about my son!" Amos digressed finally, shaking his head. "Tell me about yourself, m'boy! How are you handling the culture shock?"

Ed blinked, struggling to catch up with the whiplash-inducing change of subject, and shrugged belatedly. "Not- not so bad, actually."

"Good, good, I'm glad to hear that. I hear it can be quite a change of pace for muggleborns and the like."

"I guess." Edward said, unsure of how to respond.

"Oh, Millie!" Amos said, suddenly looking over Edward's shoulder. "Millie, come here. This is the alchemy professor."

Edward turned around to find a somewhat middle-aged woman making her way toward them, who had a distinctly kind air about her. Amos wrapped an arm tenderly around her waist.

"Edward, this is my wife, Millie."

"It's a pleasure, Professor Elric."She said, with a respectful nod.

"Likewise."

She leaned forward and murmured conspiritorially, with a slight grin, as her husband conversed with another man, apparently an acquaintance he'd just noticed. "I know he can be a bit overbearing, but he means well."

"It's okay, he reminds me of somebody I used to know." Ed said fondly, remembering that it was two people; Maes Hughes and the alter, Maes Streiten. "And besides, he has good reason to brag. Your son is an intelligent young man. One of my best students, even with alchemy being so difficult to master."

"Oh dear, thank you." She said, with a blush, and a proud smile. "He is a wonderful boy."

"I'd like to know, though..." Edward murmured, referring to Amos, "Is he always this...um..."

"Chipper? Yes. Except at work."

"Wow."

Mrs. Diggory nodded, with a smile. "It gets tiring sometimes, but he's a wonderful man, and an even better husband and father. Though he has been known to overwhelm some people on the first impression."

"I can't imagine why." Ed drawled. He glanced toward Amos, and made a shushing gesture after meeting eyes with Mrs. Diggory again. She struggled to restrain a smile as Edward silently backed away, and dodged through the crowd to esca- um, _explore_. Yes. Yes, that was it.

He had a feeling he'd covered about half of the Great hall when he stopped, and sighed, before noticing that someone was still watching him.

"Oh. Hi." Edward said, mildly surprised. He hadn't realized who he was standing next to after beating a hasty escape from Diggory before that moment.

"Hello."

"Can I unscrew my smile now?"

Albus gave him a sidelong look, with a wry grin. Ed took this as a yes.

"Ugh, god, my jaw hurts." Ed muttered, rubbing his temples. "Not that I'm complaining, but how much longer will this be?"

"It will wind to a close soon." Albus assured him, with a nod toward the windows at the end of the hall, where the sun had long past begun it's descent from the noontime high. "The last train will leave in approximately two hours." He then turned toward Edward, and smiled. "Amos made quite an impression, I see."

"Yeah, on my _shoulder_. You know him?"

"Oh, yes. He is a high-ranking Ministry Official."

"...Really."

"He works in the Department of Regulation for Control of Magical Creatures. Their jurisdiction happens to include werewolves."

Ed's stomach went cold. Suddenly, the interest made sense. Not only because of the fact that he wasn't a wizard, but because he'd had close contact with Remus Lupin. Was this some kind of sign he was being targeted as a sympathizer?

"Do not think ill of him quite yet, Edward. Amos is not one to deceive, it is likely that he has no interest in your relation to Remus. He takes his job seriously, but he does not connive."

"...I guess I'll have to trust your judgement on this one." Edward said, growing used to the fact that Albus could read him like an open book. It seemed to be an innate talent of his.

"Please do. I have known Amos to be a very straightforward man. If he has questions, he will ask you outright. If you wish to leave early, then you may." Albus said, and nodded at someone across the room. "If you will excuse me. "

Edward watched him go, politely weaving through the crowd to reach whoever had met eyes with him. He stood in place for a bit longer, feeling a bit uncomfortable. Who knew what other people here were watching him, or worse? He didn't care one way or the other what they thought of him for being friends with Remus, but it still made him squirm a bit to know that anyone and everyone could be trying to back him into a corner.

He sighed through his nose. _Screw it. I've been standing here for ten minutes, and nobody seems to want to talk to me anyway. Maybe if I'm quick, nobody will notice._

"Excuse me."

He got no more than ten feet before his plan was foiled. _Damn._

He turned around. "Yes?"

A blonde woman wearing a blue dress looked him up and down with her sharp gray eyes. "Evangeline Greengrass. I take it you are Mr. Elric?"

"I am."

"And how old are you?"

"Twenty-two. Why?"

"Isn't that a bit... young to be a teacher?"

Ed arched an eyebrow. "The Headmaster seems to think it's fine, and I don't have a problem with it, so... I don't think so, no."

"Hm. And you are a muggle as well, are you?"

"Is this twenty questions, or something?" Ed asked, growing irritated. "Why do you want to know? More importantly, why does it matter?"

"I would simply like some insight on why a non-wizard was tapped to teach at this school. I don't believe it's proper."

"Nobody's_ forcing_ you to keep your kid in my class, lady."

"I would never allow my child to learn _alchemy."_ She spat, as if horrified.

"...Then why in the _hell_ are you harassing me?" Ed stared at her as if she had three heads, and then shook his. "Nevermind. Don't answer that. I'm just gonna walk away now."

He turned away and did exactly that. His jaw was clenched in an attempt to keep his temper in check, and he didn't even bother stopping to notify Albus that he would be leaving because of the simple fact that he might get hung up again. Living in New York had only amplified one facet of his personality, if it had done anything to him at all- s_ay what you mean, mean what you say, and don't beat around the bush._ He couldn't stand the honeyed words and polite nonsense, especially when it was just a veil to hide contempt.

The trip back to his quarters was uneventful, and he only remained there for a few moments while gathering his things. He turned and left, making a beeline for the front doors, and the school boundaries beyond that.

"Professor Elric! Sir! Please wait a moment, I'd like to have a word with you!"

Ed stopped in his tracks, stifling a sigh. _Five more steps, and I would have been home free. Oh well._

"Yes?" He said wearily, turning back around to face the man who'd called to him.

He was a thoroughly average-looking man. Mid-range brown hair, brown eyes, and slightly rounded features. He stood a few inches taller than Edward, and while that bristled on a slightly visceral level, he could ignore it.

"The first muggle teacher at Hogwarts. Never thought I'd see that." The man grinned, panting slightly from his jog as he approached. "Cyrus Granger. It's a pleasure."

"Granger...?" Ed racked his mind, trying to remember which of his students had that name.

"My daughter Hermione is very interested in your class, Mr. Elric. I wonder if you would consider accepting her for next year, despite only being a fourth-year?"

"Oh." Ed said, relieved he hadn't forgotten the name of one of his students. "Um... Yeah. She's a smart girl, I'm sure she'll do fine."

"Excellent. I wanted to ask you earlier, but I was told you'd left. That and my wife was off gabbing it up with Professor Sprout, so I was on my own there. You know how women can get." He said, with a good-natured roll of the eyes.

"Sure." _Not in the least._

"Right then. I'll let you finish your escape." He said with a wink, and backed a few steps away before turning back around. "Pleasure meeting you, Professor. Have a nice summer!"

"Likewise." Ed waved in a sort of half-salute from the brow.

He turned back around himself, starting down the front steps of the school with a much less hurried and angry stride. That little encounter with Hermione's father just now had served to cool his head slightly, and he was glad for it.

Despite the less-than-pleasant encounter he'd had with the Greengrass woman, he fully planned on returning the next year. It was simply a matter of ignoring the loud-voiced minority of people who didn't want him there, and thinking more about the ones who did. He had a new syllabus to make for the next year, new friends to keep up with, and a textbook to help finish, so it would not be a lazy summer. His work was cut out for him, but he was up to it.

* * *

And there you have it. Year one, done. Even though it took, like, three in reality. Eheh.

Now for the next four...

Some random trivia:

1- 'Fox chases the rabbit around the tree and down the hole' is the saying I was referencing way back in the beginning. Sahara, baby!

2- Maes Streiten. Hee. Anybody who is as much of an FMA dub geek as I am knows Sonny Strait, right? And in a panel at some con, somebody asked him what it was like to play Hughes as a Nazi. This led to him explaining that his ancestors were German, and the name 'Strait' was actually anglicized from 'Streiten', which means 'one who likes to pick fights'. So, yeah... that's an obscure shoutout to Sonny, right there. You might find other easter eggs like that later on depending on how dorky of a mood I'm in while writing, which is fairly often. XD

EDIT

Yes, I know I already wrote about Ed meeting Amos. That is precisely why I said I will go back sometime in the near future and correct these minor plot holes. Most of this story was typed up in 2007 or 2008, and I don't clearly remember what has already been posted unless I go back and read over the chapters, which I am now doing. I don't have them on my computer due to the hard drive fiasco, so I'm copypasting them into word for the revisions. :)


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